Tag Archives: Welsh Football

Saturday 28th February 2026 – I HAVE JUST …

… watched one of the best football matches that I have ever seen.

Of course, watching a good match is always quite enjoyable, but when it involves TNS not only being beaten but also royally stuffed by a real Welsh football team, and in a Cup Final too, that really is the icing on the cake.

It’s a match to which I’ve been looking forward all weekend, and so last night, I decided to have an early night so that I would really be in the best of form to watch it.

Of course, what I decide to do and what actually happens are not the same thing, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall. And so none of my faithful readers will be in the least surprised to hear that it was 23:50 when I finally made it into bed.

Yes, it was that late. I really don’t know where the time goes these days. No matter what I try to do, it’s very rare that I can beat my curfew time of 22:30.

Once in bed, though, I was asleep quite quickly, and that’s the last thing that I remember until the alarm went off at 06:29. It was another night when I don’t believe that I moved a muscle at all.

As seems to be the case these days, I struggled to make it into the bathroom, but I finally managed it and had a good wash, a change of clothes and a handwashing session. I need to keep on top of my socks and undies, otherwise I’ll run out of stock.

In the kitchen, I made my hot drink and took my medication, including the Vitamin B12 and Vitamin D supplements that the people at dialysis are insisting that I take. It’s only once a month, and I usually always forget to take them.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out what was going on during the night.

One of my neighbours had a car parked on their property for a couple of months and I had my eye on it. Then, they announced that they were selling it but the price that they wanted for it was way out of my pocket and way out of what I thought it was worth, so I was rather disappointed with them about this. But we ended up walking into Crewe, walking down Delamere Street towards the post office one early Saturday morning. I had a letter to write and I needed a stamped envelope, so I thought that I’d go into the post office to buy one, but I suspected that if the post office were open at this time, there would be quite a queue inside. So we went and opened the door, and there was really a queue, quite a long one in there in fact, and they were all at one counter because there was just one counter open. Someone was arguing with someone about small change, saying that they’d had to go all the way to Chester this morning to fetch some small change, so they are rather careful about how they give it out. Eventually, the queue divided into two as another window opened. There was a young girl who went up to the window and handed over a ring. She asked if she could change this engagement ring for a single person’s ring. A couple of people felt sorry for her, but I seemed to remember that this girl had been engaged three or four times before, but it had all broken off, so I wondered what was happening now with this latest one. Then she explained that she’d like to have the money back, and have it back quickly, because everyone will remember what happened when she used a cheque last time she had to buy something. I for one didn’t know what she meant, but I imagined that one or two other people in this queue must have known or something like that.

In the past, I would always have been interested in cars parked up for ages in neighbours’ gardens, but these days, there’s not a car being made anywhere in the World that is of any interest to me.

The story about the Post Office is perfectly true, though. Go in there at any normally busy time, and there would only be one window open of the five or six available. And I know who the girl was too. She was a colleague of Nerina’s when Nerina worked at Crewe before she moved to Stockport, who was also in the same school year as my brother.

Interestingly, going to Chester for small change was an interesting point. When I had my taxis, we had the contract for the local McDonald’s. They could only ever use approved products supplied by the franchise and never buy anything in a local shop. There are several occasions when we had to run to the Wrexham outlet for a bag of lettuce or to the Chester one for some cartons of milk, that kind of thing. I remember once, the Saturday before Christmas, having to go to Wrexham for lettuce, taking Nerina with me, dropping her off at a supermarket there to do our Christmas shopping while I went to pick up the lettuce.

That was the kind of pressure under which we were living. We never had five minutes to ourselves to relax. No wonder our marriage didn’t last.

The nurse turned up as usual to sort out my feet and legs, and we had a chat about Welsh football. I’m not quite sure why because it’s a very specialised subject.

After he left, I made breakfast and began my new book, ESSAYS ON THE LATIN ORIENT by William A. Miller, having finished the previous one about plants at Calleva Atrebates.

This book goes back to 1921 and refers to the history of Greece under the Roman and then the Byzantine Empire, something about which I really ought to know much more.

Everyone knows about the “Franks” — the crusaders who passed through there on their way to the Holy Land and who seemed to spend more time fighting the Byzantines as they crossed that empire than they ever did fighting the Saracens to free the Holy Land — but that’s about the extent of my knowledge. I really ought to be doing better than that.

Back in here, I had something of a footfest with the highlights of last night’s matches in Wales. They were quite entertaining, but there was nothing remarkable about any of them.

In fact, it was quite a leisurely late morning, with the monotony being broken by a series of ‘phone calls about a missing letter. I posted it (or, rather, my faithful cleaner did) on the 12th February, but it’s still not been received and the action to which it refers took place today. I had to find a copy of the letter and e-mail it.

This afternoon, after my disgusting drink break, I attacked yet another pile of radio notes, as I said yesterday that I would. And now they are edited and the two halves of the programme have been prepared. The joining track has been chosen and remixed etc, and the notes are written ready for typing. This means that I can have a complete day off tomorrow. Won’t that be nice?

Round about 17:30, I went and prepared tea because there won’t be much time later. We had the football match to watch instead.

It was the League Cup Final with TNS, odds-on favourites to win (as usual), against rank outsiders Y Barri.

Usually, games involving TNS, the only full-time club in the league with a squad that cost a fortune, involve a backs-to-the-wall approach with the opposition penned back in their own penalty area with piles of desperate defending. However, I’ve noticed a weakness in TNS’s defence, and that is that they are very susceptible to the ball “over the top” with a quick forward rushing onto the ball. And Y Barri have the two quickest forwards in the league in Ieuan Owen and Ollie Hulbert

Y Barri took the game to TNS right from the start and actually had TNS pinned in their own penalty area for long periods of the game. And when the TNS goalkeeper couldn’t hang on to the ball from a cross into the penalty area, Ieuan Owen was the first to reach the loose ball, and that was Y Barri 1-0 up.

As the second half wore on, you could see that Y Barri were tiring rapidly, and it was a question of whether they could hang on. But as we entered injury time, we had Ieuan Owen reacting first to a loose ball about twenty-five yards out of the TNS goal, and what followed was the best goal that you are ever likely to see at this level of football. HOW ABOUT THIS?

That wasn’t all the excitement either. The match finished in a good old-fashioned brawl involving just about every one of the twenty-two players, all of the staff and all of the substitutes on the bench.

After that, I went and had the tea that I’d prepared – baked potato, vegan salad and one of those breadcrumbed quorn fillets that I like, followed by ginger cake and home-made ice cream

Now though, I’m off to bed, hoping for a good lie-in tomorrow. I certainly deserve it, but we shall have to see about that.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about my new book … "well, one of us has" – ed … one of my friends asked me what book I was reading at the moment.
"It’s called ‘Essays on the Latin Orient’" I replied.
"Oh yes" she said. "Weren’t they promoted to League One a couple of seasons ago?"

Saturday 6th December 2025 – MY CHRISTMAS CAKES …

… both are now marzipanned and back in the fridge, waiting for next weekend when I shall ice them. All that remains after that … "all!" – ed … will be to make the Christmas pudding and the mince pies.

And then to hope that my appetite comes back so that I can enjoy them. At the rate that I’m going, though, it’s unlikely. My appetite is still almost non-existent, but I’m doing my best.

Anyway, last night was another late night. Almost midnight, in fact, when I finally climbed into bed. It was a dreadful night too. It seemed almost as if I hadn’t gone to sleep at all, but instead I lay there tossing and turning throughout the night.

When the alarm went off, I was in that no-man’s land of not being asleep but not being awake either. However, I forced myself out of bed before the second alarm and then, at some point, staggered off into the bathroom.

After the medication and the hot ginger, honey and lemon, I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. And considering that I didn’t think that I’d gone to sleep at all, I was surprised by just how much there was on there.

I was back on the taxis and it had been a really quiet night. We hadn’t done very much so at the end of the night I went to book myself a room in a hotel to stay the night. I walked in, and one of my neighbours from Shavington was there. We had a chat and he asked me how things were. I told him that they weren’t so good at the moment. I dropped one of my crutches and he said “I’ll try to pick it up” but I picked it up instead. For some reason, his hand went onto my chest to try to stop me breathing. I had to tell him a couple of times to stop doing that. He asked me if I was going to look for another driver. I replied that I’d be finishing school in a couple of months so there’s not much point. Then, my girl driver came in. She wanted to cash up everything. She was very concerned about me. She laid all of her things out on the counter at this hotel reception. She asked if my phone would charge up my headphones. I replied “better than that, there’s a slot to listen where you plug in”. We began to chat but then she had a job to go out to do so she said that she’d have to go, but she didn’t really want to go. I replied “you can always stop the night with me”. She replied “well, I have this fare that I have to pick up”. I replied “well, you can always come back later”. She gave me one of these strange looks”.

It beats me why I would want to book a room in a hotel. And as for the neighbour, I’ve not thought about him since probably about 1972 so how come he worked his way into the scene, I don’t know. But we did have some quiet nights at times where we barely turned a wheel and that was what I call boring. I’d much rather be busy than lounging around doing nothing.

It had been a quiet night on the taxis. I hadn’t really done very much so I was thinking about going home to cash up everything and then maybe have an early night for once. Thomas from Peterborough was extremely offended that he would lose his evening’s work but people explained to him that he was a part-time driver and he would have to take what’s happening from the more important people who were planning the work and booking it … fell asleep here … so there I was, waiting for the final whistle and ready to drop down on my side to carry on working again.

This seems to be part of the first dream, with me going off on a tangent again, whoever Thomas from Peterborough is. But the second part of this looks like we’re back to talking football again.

There was some kind of big family group outing going on, and I was part of it on my own. I ended up talking to this married woman who had a daughter. She and her husband were there and the daughter but I was chatting to this woman. We ended up spending an awful lot of time together, so much so that I’m sure that there must have been talk. The daughter took to me too and I actually took her fishing on one occasion while we were on this outing. But then she said at the night as we were all prepared to camp down in this field that she was off fishing with another boy and she’d be back in the morning to see me so we bedded down. In the meantime, these kids were bedded down in this stream and they came across a car that was in the water. One of them opened the door and recoiled in horror, and they ran all the way back to where we were camping. The teacher was busy talking to a group of people about a missing car. These kids came dashing in, they saw this drawing and shouted “this is the car, this is the car”. They explained that they had seen the car in this stream so we all set out. I was with this woman again and we came to where we needed to go down to the bottom in a lift. There were several lifts, and everyone was queueing at one or two, so we went over to the one where no-one was queueing. We pressed the button and the doors opened, and the girl was in there, wrapped up in a sleeping bag asleep with one of her friends. We went down in this lift and as the lift approached the bottom, I shouted, woke these two kids and unzipped them out of their sleeping bag. We made ready to meet the others who were on their way down so that we could walk off to see the car in this stream and point out what was so horrific to the kids.

There’s an interesting story behind this dream too, but the World isn’t ready to hear it yet. I’ve no idea to what the car relates, though

Did I dictate this dream about a girl whom I knew who was a few years younger than me? We used to hang around a lot together … "no you didn’t" – ed …. It came to the time when she was eighteen and was planning on going to university. In the meantime, I’d been working for a few years after leaving school and was thinking of going to university so I’d applied to Aberdeen. My application had gone in and I asked this girl where she was thinking of going. She replied that she didn’t really know but Aberdeen sounded great to her. I asked if she had a prospectus but she said that she hadn’t, but she’d like to find one somewhere. I said that I had one and I asked her “why not come back to my house and we can spend a day or two going through the prospectus?”. Eventually, she agreed. When I arrived back home, this girl had transformed herself into a big spider. My mother hated spiders so she wouldn’t let this one into the house. I picked up a bike and a few camping things and went off to Canada, with the bike, these camping things and the spider. I set out, and while I was cycling around, I was talking to this spider about Aberdeen University. Eventually, I came to a great big kind of tourist attraction. It was really complicated. There was a river there down in the valley but there was also a river there had been partly canalised that was at the level at which we were. It was running over stones and was really rapid here, splashing everyone. There were people fishing, catching some enormous sizes of fish so I decided that I would spend half an hour fishing while this girl finished off making up her mind, and then we could get together and make a decision. However, I couldn’t make my bike stand up. I eventually found a bike park, which was complicated enough to reach, but no matter how I tried, there was too much weight on my bike for it to stand upright. I was having to think about a solution to prop it up somewhere so that I could go off to fish and leave this girl to finalise her decision. There were a couple of people there, married couples who were sitting around, and even they couldn’t help me make this bike stand upright. I was becoming so frustrated about that.

There is a girl to whom this story fits quite well, although at the time the events in the real World were happening, I didn’t realise it. Turning into a spider and cycling to Canada are quite surreal ideas though.

One thing about these dreams though is that it concerns fishing. I’ve only ever been fishing twice in my life, as a young kid, and found it to be one of the most boring “sports” ever. I couldn’t see the point then and it’s even less so today. I can’t understand why, all of a sudden, I’d be thinking of going fishing right now.

The nurse was late today coming round. I reminded him that it’s possible that tomorrow he’ll find me in bed in the morning, so he made a note. And after he finished my legs, he cleared off.

Once he’d gone, I could make breakfast and carry on reading some more of Thomas Codrington’s ROMAN ROADS IN BRITAIN. Today, we’re still across Hadrian’s Wall roaming around Dere Street but as yet, I’ve not found anything of real importance.

After breakfast, I marzipanned my Christmas cakes. My marzipanning technique seems to be improving because it all went together perfectly the first time of trying the first time without any problems at all. I hope that the icing goes as well as this next weekend.

One thing that I miss though is my turntable. When I was building computers twenty-odd years ago, I had a turntable on which I would put them and it saved me hours. If I had had it here and used it for the marzipanning and the icing, I would save hours on those jobs too.

After a disgusting drink break, I had a mini foot-fest, watching the highlights of last night’s games in Wales. And that reminds me – ONE OF THE BEST GOALS YOU ARE EVER LIKELY TO SEE FOR A LONG, LONG TIME are now available. Take a bow, Corey Shephard!

Later on, I wrote the missing notes for another radio programme to be broadcast in the distant future and there was even time to make a start on yet another radio programme. I have to make the most of my freedom these days.

Things could have been so much better and I could have done so much more too except that once again, I fell asleep in the afternoon. For a good hour or so too. I’m really fed up of all of this.

There was more football tonight – the League Cup semi-final between Cambrian United and Y Barri. Cambrian, from the second division and who play their home games in the suburbs of Tonypandy, had the lion’s share of the play but the class of Y Barri showed through. Whatever chances they created, they took them, whereas Cambrian were pretty wasteful.

The score of 0-3 to Y Barri was definitely a flattering scoreline. And I do have to say that near the end, I crashed out a couple of times.

Tea was chips, salad and some of those vegan nuggets that I like. Only a small portion, but even so, I struggled to eat it all.

Right now though, I’m off to bed, hoping for a really good lie-in tomorrow. But we shall see about that.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about cycling to Canada … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of when I was AT THE POINT AMOUR LIGHTHOUSE on my mega-drive around the mountains of Labrador in 2010.
At the lighthouse, I met a woman who stared in disbelief at my small urban-motoring saloon and said, incredulously "have you driven around the Trans-labrador Highway in THAT??? "
"Ohh yes" I replied. "It’s not the car that counts, it’s the driver. And the next time that I come to Canada, I’ll be crossing the Atlantic on a motor-bike!"
The funny thing about this story is that when I told it to a Canadian girl a few years later, she asked "and did you?"
All of which goes to show that, as Kenneth Williams and Alfred Hitchcock once famously said, "it’s a waste of time telling jokes to foreigners."

Sunday 18th May 2025 – REGULAR READERS OF …

… this rubbish will recall what happens on a Sunday morning, so they won’t need any reminder.

But for the benefit of new readers, of whom there are more than just a few these days, in the Good Old Days, Sundays used to be days of rest and I would lie in until I felt like leaving the bed. Sometimes it would be long after midday before I personally would see the light of day.

Since the nurse has been coming to see me every morning, those times really are a thing of the past. As he (or she) doesn’t usually arrive until about 08:20, I’ve tried my best to have a lie-in until about 08:00, just on the principle of the thing.

But now we have dialysis of course, and ever since then, almost every Sunday has been an early start, long before the alarm has gone off. Some times are earlier than others, but I don’t think that there has ever been a start as early as 02:05

Last night, I was absolutely whacked, as seems to be the case after a dialysis session. I skimmed through my notes and skimmed through the stats and the back-up. When I had finished everything, it was a mere 22:50.

There were the radio notes to dictate for programme 260417 and there weren’t all that many of those. By 23:15 I was tucked up in bed ready for a good night’s sleep and something of a little lie-in.

And so the story went. I was well away until all of 02:05 when I awoke. And to put the icing on the cake, I was drenched in sweat again and it’s been a long time since that has happened, hasn’t it?

It must have been a good hour at least that I was awake there, tossing and turning and trying my best to go off to sleep, and to my surprise, I eventually managed it. But not for long though. I was awake again at 05:50, drenched in sweat once more.

This time I couldn’t go back to sleep and by about 06:10, with it going light outside, I bit the bullet and hauled myself out of bed.

After the usual stint in the bathroom, I went into the kitchen for the medication. They have given me a new calcium pill, an effervescent one, and it gave me a stomach ache almost straight away. I shall have to make a note of that.

Back in here, there was some stuff on the dictaphone that needed to be transcribed. I was dreaming about some mythical God and his wife and family who used the taxis to take themselves to hospital examinations and how they were on good terms with as many people as possible although there were of course the usual one or two whom they hadn’t seemed to appreciate at all. It was only just going under way when I awoke, which was a shame.

That was when I awoke at 02:05. The dream itself is the usual confused mass of something else quite meaningless. Why would a God be going for medical treatment? Especially in a taxi? Surely if you are a God, you don’t need medical treatment, being omnipotent and eternal and all of that.

Then later, there was absolute chaos taking place as the whole economy had collapsed. There were people forming companies and businesses to do different things and were trying to arrange finance but the currency was collapsing so quickly that by the time that they had arranged some finance it was absolutely worthless. People were fighting over these limited resources and it was all becoming extremely unpleasant. There was no possible way for anyone to actually save anything. The medical service was probably the worst-hit with no medical care being offered to anyone. The most obvious course was for people to start dying by their thousands. I managed to isolate some kind of company and try to keep it out of the mainstream so that it wouldn’t be sucked in anywhere but it was a pretty difficult task and I really had to be very careful about where I was and what I was doing because I couldn’t allow it to be infiltrated or pirated by anyone else. While all of this maelstrom was going on inside the house, I was upstairs at the top of the stairs tucked away behind a corner. I heard a door open and it was two girls from the Grammar School in brown skirts and cherry-red cardigans. They were talking about a couple of musicians who had de-electrified themselves and were going to spend much more time just doing acoustic numbers instead as a way of keeping going. As these two girls went past, I decided that I’d follow them so that I could see if I could find out more about what it was they were talking about and who it was who was involved

This sounds just like post-Brexit Britain, or the housing collapse in 1992, but regular readers of this rubbish will recall the dramatic collapse of Sterling in 1973,1974 and 1975 with inflation roaring up from an already-high 10% to almost 30% per annum and the UK going cap-in hand with the begging bowl to the International Monetary Fund for a bale-out.

This dream has however made me scratch my head. Which Girls’ School had brown skirts, a brown blazer and cherry-red cardigans? I can see the school uniforms now but can I Elephants put a name to it?

The nurse came round as usual and the long-expected explosion took place. He began to talk about a subject that fills me with distaste (regular readers of this rubbish will recall exactly what it is) despite having been told on a couple of occasions not to discuss it so I told him that if he mentions it one more time, I’ll put him outside the door and find another nurse who will treat me and my wishes with respect.

After that, we had the silent treatment and then he cleared off.

I made breakfast and read some more of MY BOOK. We’ve left Norham Castle, had a brief whistle-stop of less than half a page at Nottingham Castle and have now arrived at Odiham Castle in Hampshire, where we began by discussing that unique piece of Medieval Military architecture known as … errr … “The Basingstoke Canal”, built at the height of the medieval period in … errr … 1794.

Our author tells us that "the place, no doubt, was always one of strength, and the open woodland about it was favourable to the preservation of game, and to the wilder kind of sporting in which the Plantagenet monarchs took great delight.". I don’t know about you, but that had my imagination racing.

After breakfast I came in here to deal with some e-mails. One of them was from a guy in Caen who had seen my advert for a joiner and had replied, requesting further information. I sent him what he needed and he ‘phoned me back. We had a very long chat that turned out to be quite productive.

If I engage him, he’s going to be expensive because he lives so far away but he seemed to have the correct kind of attitude – sensitive to my ideas but with good suggestions of his own.

There was another ‘phone call, this time from a plumber. He’s going to come to see me on Wednesday for a chat.

After I’d dealt with everything, I went for a disgusting drink break and then began to edit the radio notes. There were some from a couple of weeks ago so I attacked those, and now all of that is done, the two parts are assembled, the eleventh track is chosen and the notes written ready for dictation.

Then I made a start on those that I dictated last night, and I’m about a third of a way through them.

What made me stop was that it was baking time. I need a loaf of bread and a pile of pizza dough so I set about and bashed out some dough, leaving it to fester.

Back in here, there was football, Hwlffordd v Caernarfon Town. This was a “winner take all” scenario, with the winner representing the League in European club competition next season.

In front of a massive crowd for West Wales, the largest in the League this season, it was something of a damp squib. The Cofis were clearly exhausted after their marathon 50-week season and once it became obvious that their game plan of long balls over the top to feed lightning winger Louis Lloyd wasn’t working, they had no Plan B. There were some very leaden legs out there.

Hwlffordd on the other hand had a very slow start but once they slipped into gear they gave a workman-like performance without actually setting the game alight. Some rather uncharacteristic sloppy defending by the Cofis let Hwlffordd in for two simple goals that they should never have been allowed to have, and they scored a third from a breakaway right near the end when everyone from Caernarfon was up in the Hwlffordd penalty area.

Deep in stoppage time the Cofis pulled one back, New Zealand keeper Zak Jones thinking a ball was going out and not realising that Louis Lloyd was lurking behind him, but it was too little, too late by then.

In truth, it wasn’t a great spectacle. We’ve seen many much better games than this, and Hwlffordd will have to pull themselves up a few notches if they are to improve Wales’s coefficient on the European club stage.

Tonight’s pizza was another candidate for “the best ever”, and the bread looks really good too. I’ll tell you tomorrow what it’s like because right now I’m off to bed, later than usual.

But seeing as we have been talking about the Basingstoke Canal … "well, one of us has" – ed … it somehow seems to be appropriate that "it was favourable to the … wilder kind of sporting in which the Plantagenet monarchs took great delight".
When a friend of mine, who lives down that end of the country, came on-line later I mentioned it to her.
"I’m not surprised" she said. "Didn’t you know?"
"Know what?" I asked.
"The Basingstoke Canal in the time of the Plantagenet monarchs was where the sport of Serf Riding was invented."

Saturday 1st March 2025 – DYDD GWYL DEWI HAPUS.

And a happy St David’s Day to those of you who don’t celebrate it. And my leek soup was delicious. Even better – there’s enough left for lunch tomorrow.

That is of course, always assuming that I’m here to eat it because a few more nights like last night and a few more days like today and I won’t be.

As I expected, last night was another late night. I didn’t hang around at all though so I’ve no idea why I couldn’t have been in bed at a reasonable time.

Once in bed though, I couldn’t sleep. I had a pain in the neck (and I’m not talking about a partner here) that was absolutely agonising and try as I might, I couldn’t make myself comfortable. What with all of the music drifting up from the ball in the town centre and the revellers making their way back to the millions of motorhomes parked all around here, I lay awake for hours and I’m not joking either.

When the alarm went off I was fast asleep though and once more it was a very weary, bleary-eyed me who struggled to his feet.

After a wash, I set the washing machine off. And how many times is this now that I’ve had dirty clothes left over after I’ve filled the machine? Either I need a bigger machine or else I need to use the machine more frequently.

Next, it was into the kitchen for the medication, remembering not to take the medicine that I’m not supposed to take on Dialysis Day.

Back in here, I was surprised to find some stuff on the dictaphone from the night. I seriously thought that I hadn’t been asleep long enough. I’d been out on a night off and had gone to the pub to sit and have a quiet drink. Then I thought that it was becoming late so I’d better set out and head for home. I began to jog and when I reached my house, I carried on running but suddenly realised that I was supposed to be going home, not for a run as I used to do at night, so I turned round and went back to the house but suddenly found myself running again. I had to stop and go back another time. When I reached the house I put my hand on the door to open it and a dog began to bark. Someone said “it’s Eric”. They came to meet me and said “a girl has been to see you” and mentioned her name. I thought that I recognised the name from somewhere as if it was someone whom I knew in Stockport but I suddenly realised that it was a girl with whom I’d worked once. Whatever does she want? “Well, she’s left her business card”. I went in and saw on the table a business card so I picked it up. It wasn’t hers though, but for a guy called Tim Edmonds who works for the Government. “Who’s Tim Edmonds? What does he want?”. My youngest sister asked me “is your car OK?”. I replied “yes. Shouldn’t it have been?”. She looked at her husband and said “I’m just making sure that he has some windows in his car” so that there had obviously been something about windows in cars between the two of them.

When I was taxi-driving when I lived in Winsford I often used to go for a run when I came home at some kind of silly hour in the early morning. I really enjoyed it and it was a really good way for me to relax and unwind. I lost the habit after that when I moved to Crewe but I started running again when I moved to Belgium. After I taught Roxanne to ride a bike she used to chase me through the local park. There’s also a story about my youngest sister, her husband and a window too but that’s yet another story that the World isn’t quite ready to hear.

Isabelle breezed in, hours late because of Carnaval. Today is the defilé des enfants – the Children’s Procession when all the kids dress up as their favourite characters and walk into town accompanied by the brass bands, and they have begun to close all of the streets even at this time of the morning. That’s actually my favourite part of the long weekend and a few years ago I hit the streets with my recording gear and interviewed some of the kids to make a radio programme

After she left I made my breakfast and read MY BOOK.

Today we are talking about Burpham Camp in Sussex. And having disputed at great length (as regular readers of this rubbish will recall) the opinion that some of these hilltop camps are “Danish camps” because the Danes wouldn’t build impressive fortifications, he tells us, about Burpham Camp, that "it is safe to suppose that it is not a British work. For reasons as obvious it is not Roman. It has no known characteristics of Saxon work, and had it been such, the church would certainly have been within the vallum. It must therefore be either Danish or Norman. To Norman work it has no resemblance, and the conclusion is that it is Danish.".

So having insisted "that it is not a British work" and "has no known characteristics of Saxon work", according to archaeological excavations undertaken on behalf of the National Heritage List, "the Iron Age promontory fort at Burpham is an example of an inland fort where the natural defensive qualities of the land were utilised and the site was reoccupied as a burh in the Anglo-Saxon period. ".

After breakfast I had bread to make for tea tonight – just a couple of rolls – and then I went to sit down for half an hour for a rest with a mug of coffee.

When my cleaner came in, she found me hard at work. Not only had I prepared all of the veg for my soup, I actually had it all in the pot simmering away and the bread was in the air fryer cooking. Today we gave the anaesthetic cream a try-out and after she left, I carried on with my soup.

The taxi was driven today by my favourite taxi driver but she was late. And then we had to go to pick up someone else but because the roads were all closed because of the defilé we had to go miles and miles out of our way.

It took an age to sort out the other passenger and then we had to go almost to Bréhal before we could pick up the road to Avranches, a detour of about a dozen miles.

As you might expect, I was last to arrive and was even later because there were two emergencies admitted. My appointment is in principle at 13:30, and I wasn’t seen to until 14:45.

By that time the anaesthetic had long-since worn off so I knew all about the connection. And Julie the Cook tried to do it all on her own and failed, and I was in total and utter agony and despair throughout the entire session.

However, I did manage to watch the football. The result was predictable, with TNS, eight points clear at the top defeating Aberystwyth, eight points adrift at the foot of the bale, winning the League Cup.

What wasn’t predictable was the heavy weather that TNS made of it and while Aberystwyth never looked like threatening the TNS goal, a 1-0 win isn’t a safe win by any means. All I can say though is that if Aberystwyth had played with the same fire and spirit throughout the season that they showed today, they wouldn’t be in anything like as much trouble as they are.

What with one thing and another it was 19:45 when I returned home. While all of the police had ringed the town with roadblocks to hunt down drunken drivers, a bunch of drunken teenagers were misbehaving in the street blocking all of the traffic and needed quite a lot of persuasion to move.

When I finally returned home I finished off making the soup and have somehow ended up with two litres of it. That will keep me going for a while, I reckon.

Tomorrow I’ll be bread-making, a complete loaf this time, and flapjack-making. As for the radio programme, Grahame and I have been chatting on the internet exchanging ideas and I’ve decided to make three programmes for my “taste of Woodstock” – one of the Friday to be broadcast on the Friday, one of Saturday and the third of the Sunday, to be broadcast similarly, mutatis mutandis. So tonight and tomorrow I won’t be radioing.

But talking of Carnaval and dressing up, I told my taxi driver to be careful on the way home. "There are several elephants in the town and at Carnaval they disguise themselves by dressing up in black suits and black glasses and pretend that they are the Blues Brothers"
"That’s nonsense" she replied. "I’ve lived in this area 30 years and I’ve never seen tham"
"There you are then" I said. "It shows you just how good their disguise really is"

Wednesday 19th February 2025 – STRANGELY ENOUGH …

… last night was almost an identical carbon-copy replica of much of the previous one.

Awakening shortly after midnight and not going to sleep for several hours afterwards. There’s something bizarre happening right now and I wish I knew exactly what it was. or maybe I don’t. Some questions are best left unanswered.

One of the questions to which I wish that I did have the answer is “how come I finished so early last night?”. It was like back in the old days back on the farm when I would finish everything by 21:30 and then watch a video or a DVD until bedtime.

In fact haven’t seen a film for many weeks, the last time being halfway through LORD OF THE RINGS. But then again, these days I am far more engrossed in my reading matter and it’s probably a more healthy pursuit anyway.

So even catching up on a couple of missed football matches (like the local derby of Llay Miners’ Welfare v Gresford Athletic in the Welsh Second Tier) I was still in bed way before 23:00. And it’s been a good while since I’ve been able to say that.

It seemed to be an age before I fell asleep but it can’t have been that long because at 00:20 I was back awake again. Wide awake too, to such an extent that at one point I was actually up and about. But I soon thought better of it and went back to bed, where I did finally manage to go back to sleep.

When the alarm went off I was dead to the World and rising up from my bed was quite the struggle. It really was touch-and-go for beating the second alarm.

In the bathroom I had a good wash and scrub up and then went into the kitchen to take my medication and notice that I’d forgotten to fill the water carafe and put it in the fridge before going to bed last night.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I alighted from the bus at Shavington, at the “Sugar Loaf” and began to thumb a lift to take me down to the family home. Eventually, a strange three-wheeled van went past, something similar to a Reliant but with a kind-of fastback rear with two aerials on the back sticking out of the roof. It shuddered to a halt just round the corner so I wandered round there and there was a woman. When I opened the door to see who it was, there was a woman sitting in the driver’s seat carrying a huge bunch of flowers which protruded onto the passenger seat side of the car. I asked her if she could take me to Vine Tree Avenue. She said yes, if I didn’t mind a bunch of flowers on my head. So we set out, and she said “when I saw you there earlier you had a Value Village bag in your hand. What was in it?”. “Probably some flour” I replied. So we arrived and I alighted from the car with my things. There were a few people standing around at the top of the garden. We had a friendly chat. I’d put my things down on the floor while I was talking so then instead of picking up my things I kicked them down the hill. There was a jumper and a bag of something or other that might have been the flour. I was also (…carrying a mug of hot…) tea. I was halfway through kicking these things down the hill when I thought “this is going to be dangerous because if I miss my kick like this I’m going to end up on my face with this hot cup of tea all over me”.

If I’m going to hitch-hike for a trip that I could walk in five minutes I’m clearly doing something wrong. But Value Village is the Canadian equivalent of a charity shop. They don’t have isolated charity shops scattered around here and there in the town like in the UK but one big one where the different-coloured price labels indicate which charity supplied the goods. If you look in my collection of books and CDs you’ll see plenty of Value Village labels. There’s stuff available in Canada that never made it over into Europe and which turns up in a Value Village.

As for me being forewarned about doing myself a mischief, I wish that it was like that in real life. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I never make mistakes. I just learn a lot of lessons and for some of them I pay a very expensive price.

The nurse was almost human today, and that makes a change. If he keeps going like this he might even become normal by the end of his spell on duty. But he did confirm a rumour that I have heard before – that they could well be opening a dialysis centre in Granville. That would save me a good hour every day at least.

After he left, I made breakfast and carried on reading MY BOOK. We’ve finished the Saxons, passed over the Norse voyagers and moved into the Norman era.

So far, there has been nothing particularly controversial, although I did have a smile when I read his remark that "the Saxons were not by habit builders of military earthworks at all. At their first coming they seem to have made few or none : theirs was not a military invasion but an immigration, and one need no more look for extensive traces of earthworks to mark it than one looks for them in the track of the Pilgrim Fathers of the New England States."

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that on our way down to South Carolina and Rhys’s wedding in 2005 we stopped off at ROANOKE ISLAND and went for a look around at the fort (or, rather, its site) of the very first English colonists of North America that the “Lost Colonists” built some forty years before the Pilgrim Fathers.

He further states that "Earthworks, except where they mark a deliberate military occupation like that of the Romans or of the Normans, are the work not of the people who attack, but of those attacked." which will certainly come as news to whoever wasted all that money building all of those stone castles in England in the thirteenth and fourteenth Century.

Back in here afterwards I started on the next radio programme and by the time I knocked off – at 17:30, would you believe, I’d chosen all of the music, tracked down that which I didn’t haven edited, remixed, paired and segued it and even written all of the notes. If that’s not a good day’s work I don’t know what is.

There were several breaks too in the middle of all of that. No lunch, but still a break for the lunchtime medication.

Next was my cleaner and a shower, and much as I need a great deal of motivation in order to make myself climb into the bathtub (roll on when I have a walk-in shower downstairs) I really do feel better for it.

Finally, there was the disgusting drink break. I seem to have quite a collection of these disgusting drinks right now. There’s the anti-potassium stuff and then this protein drink. All of this medication really is a torture.

Having finished work early I relaxed for a couple of hours as a little reward to myself, well-earned, in my opinion, and then went to make tea. A left-over curry with naan bread. Only a half-size curry but I still had to battle with it to finish it all, but the naan was delicious.

So I’ll be off to bed and home for some sleep tonight. Tomorrow I’m going to have a correspondence morning before I head off to dialysis. And see what they have to tell me about anything.

But yesterday, regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we were talking … "well, one of us was" – ed … about cutting your losses and starting afresh.
A few years ago I was talking to Nerina about that.
Her response was "I suppose that that explains it"
"Explains what?" I asked
"Why your parents had more children after you" she answered

Friday 20th December 2024 – WHEN THE ALARM …

… went off this morning, I was already sitting at my desk working.

Round about 05:20 I awoke all of a sudden, bolt-upright for no reason that I could fathom.

Despite trying my best to go back to sleep, by the time that 06:00 came round, I’d given it up as a bad job and rose up from the Dead. No sense wasting the early morning when I have plenty to do

It’s amazing really. It doesn’t matter how much I think that I have done on the previous day, it all starts again the following morning. It’s absolutely relentless.

Last night I was late going to bed too. It was almost midnight when I slithered into my stinking pit and I was soon asleep. And there I stayed until 05:20, as I said just now.

By 06:00 I was in the bathroom having a good wash and scrub up and then into the kitchen for the medication, remembering to take the medication today that I’m not allowed to take on Dialysis Day.

And then, for a change, I made myself a mug of instant coffee to help bring me round into the Land of the Living.

First thing that I did was to check the dictaphone to find out what I’d been doing during the night. I was with the Hobbits last night. We were baking a cake. Some time later I actually saw the cake appear. It was in my outstretched arm hovering above the bed. I went to reach it, but I couldn’t reach it at all. Every time that I closed my eyes it was still there but when I opened them it had gone again. It was like this for several minutes with me trying to touch it with the cake disappearing at that moment.

Now that was what I call a nightmare, being unable to grab hold of a cake hovering just out of my reach. And I can’t say if I saw it as a nightmare at the time because I have no recollection at all of any of this dream.

And then I was working on the radio last night but the radio was dying out. There was only really me sending stuff in. I was working on the programmes for August. I realised that I had changed my style considerably, that I was really only discussing the music rather than giving some kind of entry and exit to the radio. I’d lost a lot of the spontaneity that it had right at the very beginning. I was wondering what I was going to do about it.

One of the things about which I think quite frequently is how to change the format of my radio but I don’t have the time to think of another way of doing them

There was something else along here in the same dream where I ended up in Middle Earth with a party of dwarves being chased by a group of orcs, something rather like THE HOBBIT which is what I’m currently watching as I eat my evening meal, but that part of the dream is all very confused and didn’t really relate to anything.

It looks as if I have a fixation with Hobbits right now. They say that watching Peter Jackson’s films is hobbit-forming and who am I to disagree?

Later on, I was in bed when I was dreaming but I can’t remember where it figured in or sat in with anything

Now that’s more like one of my dreams. I can’t remember anything at all about it.

But I think that I now know what awoke me this morning. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that every few weeks I complain about a stabbing pain in my right heel, one of the worst pains that I have ever experienced. Every few minutes for about 12 hours there’s the sensation that someone is stabbing a needle into my heel

A couple of weeks ago it had moved into the sole of my foot but today, it’s started up again this morning, this time right behind the little toe and it really does hurt. Every ten minutes as regular as clockwork and I wonder if it was that which had awoken me.

And then I had a foot-fest. ¨Porthmadog FC who play the 3rd Division had put on line the videos of their recent matches in their League Cup so I sat and watched them.

First up was Porthmadog cruising home comfortably 3-0 away from home against Pwllheli. They they took on Llanidloes FC and won even more comfortably, 5-2 at home

Next up was their match against Y Rhyl and there they came unstuck. They managed a 1-1 draw but were knocked out in a penalty shoot-out 6-5.

Casting around, I managed to watch the next round too as Y Phyl took on Mynydd Y Fflint. That was a bad-tempered match, as it usually is when Y Rhyl are playing but for a third-division match there were bags of quality on view.

Y Rhyl won 2-0 but the big talking point is how come both clubs ended up still with eleven players each on the field after all of what went on

Isabelle looked at my foot when she was here, late as usual. She could see nothing but when she touched a certain spot I went through the roof. That hurt, and no mistake, so there’s definitely something going on.

Breakfast was next, and then I carried on with my book, which I finished this morning.

The conclusion is that the site was heavily occupied by a cattle-rearing concern also practising subsistence farming, wheat farming and operating a bakery too. But then the buildings abandoned when the farm was either absorbed into a larger unit of else ceased production completely..

A couple of generations later, it was occupied again for about 50-75 years, but on a much smaller scale and with lesser input from the occupiers.

The presence of some Germanic pottery shards suggests itself to the author of the report that there might have been some itinerant Germans passing through the site, but to me, I was wondering if it might have been settled by some German soldier in service to the Roman Army who had settled here after his military service had ended.

Back in here, next job was to deal with my LeClerc order and send it off. It’s the most expensive order that I’ve ever sent, but it includes quite a few Christmassy things, both for me and for others. As well as that, coffee was on special offer so even though I have a pile, I ordered some more.

For a change, LeClerc had everything that I’d noted down, so it’s my own fault that I forgot the clementines, not theirs

For much of the day I’ve been writing notes for my radio programme. I’m well into September next year so this talk in my dreams of radio programmes for August is already too late. Anyway, by the time that I’d knocked off for the day, everything had been written ready for dictation tomorrow night.

That was impressive because there were plenty of interruptions. For a start, my cleaner came in and now I have light-strings hung in the two windows, in the living room and dining area.

There was also lunch and my hot chocolate break, but finally LeClerc arrived.

In all the time that I’ve been having stuff delivered, I’ve never ever seen as much as this. There’s no room to put away some of it either so it’s going to have to loiter around for a while. But now I have my chicory, my leeks, my shallots and everything that I need. I might not be ready for Christmas, but I’ll have some phenomenal meals.

Mince pies too, which I’ll make on Sunday, because he brought the puff pastry sheets. And two kilos of carrots and a broccoli, so I’ve been dicing, blanching and freezing this afternoon too. And so on Sunday, there will be broccoli stalk soup for lunch, made with carrot-blanching water.

Tea tonight was a lovely vegan salad with air-fried chips and some of those vegan nuggets, followed by ginger cake and soya dessert. Totally delicious, but I’m looking forward now to my Christmas meal

But the final word tonight goes to my faithful cleaner who went down to the chemist’s for the next month’s medication.
As she was going in, a man was coming out in tears so she asked him what was the matter.
"It’s the doctor" he said. "He told me that I have to take one pill per day for the rest of my life"
"No need to be upset" said my cleaner. "You should come back in with me and see all of the medication that Mr Hall has to take for the rest of his life too, and he’s not complaining or crying."
"Well, he would if he had my doctor" said the man
"Why’s that" asked me cleaner
"Well, " said the man, "the chemist has looked at the prescription and only given me four!"

Monday 9th September 2024 – HERE WE GO AGAIN

Up to our ears in paperwork.

The paperwork has been on hold for several weeks while I’ve had other things to do but circumstances dictated that I had a look at it today

And you’ll be amazed how, in this world of digitalisation and computerisation, I can find so much paperwork that needs to be sorted and filed. And once I think that I’ve reached the end, I come across another bundle.

One of the things that I thought that retirement would bring me would have been an end to all of this. But what with hospital issues, old-age pensions, mobility issues, there seems to be more than there was when I was healthy.

That’s easily measured by just looking at the thickness of each year’s paperwork. What I have here only starts at 2016 but the early years seem to be positively bulimic compared to the mountain of paperwork for this year so far. And at this rate, I’ll be sorting paperwork in my sleep.

And last night I could have done that because it ended up being another late night. One of my groundhoppers had gone over to Dublin to watch Ireland v England so I ended up staying up to watch the carnage.

Once in bed I went to sleep quite quickly as you might expect after all that, and slept a deep, uninterrupted sleep for all of four or five hours.

Nevertheless I was flat out when the alarm went off at 07:00 and it was something of a struggle to haul myself up out of bed when the alarm went off.

However I was soon in the bathroom organising myself ready for the day. It’s Isabelle the nurse for the next 8 days so I need to look my best of course.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. We also (also?) discussed the idea that someone might be mad and create all kinds of problems for the Earth by detonating nuclear missiles and so on. The guy to whom I was talking was more interested in the idea of there being huge excesses rather than there being actual catastrophes, him threatening everyone with an unexploded bomb, the rocks crushing away before his bones beneath his palace etc. I replied “don’t worry, people will just think that you’re mad”. “How would that be better?”. I said “well, throughout the whole of the Kingdom they asked, and good questions too”.

That all sounds quite gruesome. I’ve no idea at all what I was on about here

Meanwhile in football it was 3-1 or 3-2, I can’t remember. They won 3-1 and the result never really looked in doubt. The victorious team played really well and managed to contain the (…fell asleep here …)

I can’t believe that I fell asleep mid-sentence but I suppose that it might happen now and again.

Someone else was messing me around for some reason or other about a payment. I’d paid it somewhat under pressure and done some research when I returned home. I found that I wasn’t liable to make this payment so I excluded it as from … and that caused a lot of complications about this. In the end I phoned my mother and told her that I was taking two days from work. One day we were travelling on the (…fell asleep here …)

Here, I dreamed that someone took the dictaphone from me and put it on the bedside cupboard. But it was a dream because when the alarm went off I’d lost the dictaphone down the bed somewhere somehow, it was still recording and had been for almost 2.5 hours. My beautiful rhythmic breathing and so on.

When the alarm went off there was a plot to kill a German General who used to nip through the British front line in his car on his way to his own troops. Whenever he did that he was heavily armed and fought off any attempt to attack him. The British used to play a lot of music really loudly, drums and everything, to awaken everyone to the fact that he was coming that way in the hope that someone could stop him. I’d proposed mining the road and having a detonator somewhere where someone could just press a button and blow up a crater with him in it but for some reason no-one had ever thought of that. One day we were driving a couple of Army lorries along that road. All of a sudden there was just total mayhem, lorries overturning and swerving out of control. At first we thought that we’d hit a mine but we hadn’t – there was no noise of any explosion so it couldn’t have been that. While all of this chaos was going on, one of the lorries having to perform some violent manoeuvres burst a front tyre and overturned. In the middle of all this carnage a black Ford Thames van with German number-plates on it disappeared into the distance. Speculation was that this van had been driving recklessly, overtaking a couple of lorries, and had carried out some manoeuvre that had caused one of the lorries to swerve and that had caused a pile-up of vehicles behind it so everyone seemed to think that this German Ford was responsible for this chaos but no-one could ever catch it. I tried to send a message to the border so that they could hold him at the border as he tries to go through but there was no way of contacting anyone at the site of the accident.

The van was actually a Ford Thames 400E, the predecessor to the Transit and the competitor to the Bedford CA but for some reason I described it as a 117E. Anyway it was a model that was mainly built for the British and Commonwealth market although some left-hand drive versions were built by Ford of Denmark so finding a left-hand drive German-registered example would be a rare bird indeed. But during the days of the “Red Ball Express”, the shuttle service of war goods from the ports to the Front Line, the haste and indiscipline was such that there were hundreds of accidents and many a French farmer, garagiste or haulier acquired an “Army Surplus” lorry or Jeep that had some kind of accident damage and which had been simply left by the roadside.

Later on Hurricane Isabelle blew through the apartment. She’s convinced that I’m being dialysed on Tuesday and wants to know why I haven’t had this prescription – the one that I don’t have – made out

If I don’t have it I can’t do anything, but this was what started me off on this paperchase today.

But not until after breakfast. And especially until I have had a coffee.

During breakfast I read some more of my ROMANS IN BRITAIN and today he mentioned the fort on the River Tweed at Newstead.

Newstead, probably the most important and substantial Roman town north of Hadrian’s Wall, has been excavated a couple of times. The most famous time was by James Curle in 1905 and he prepared a report that ran to 235 pages and a lovely list of books that contributed to his opus. And as it happens, his report is AVAILABLE ON-LINE for downloading, to add to the huge pile of books that I need to read.

It was situated on the banks of the River Tweed and was the junction presumably of the road north from Londinium and Eboracum and where the roads branched off to each end of the Antonine Wall across the isthmus between the Forth and Clyde. When the Antonine Wall was abandoned in AD184 and the Romans retreated to Hadrian’s Wall that ran between the Solway and the Tyne, it’s likely that Newstead was abandoned too. The amount of artefacts excavated at Newstead is astonishing and seems to suggest that the abandonment and subsequent flight was so panic-stricken that they could only take away what they could carry in their arms and left the rest behind. It really must have been something, this flight, and it’s a shame that whoever it was who was responsible for it could leave no written record. I would have loved to have read it.

And believe me, I shall be sifting through his list of books that the author read to see what I can find to add to my downloaded library of books to read

As for the site itself, which was discovered when the railway bridge just down the road was built across the Tweed, it’s nothing like as clear from the air as the site at Caersws is, sue, I imagine, to the constant ploughing of the site.

There was some football on the internet next. This rage for televising your home games seems now to have percolated into Wales and Newport City in the Second Division were broadcasting their match against Llanelli.

Newport picked up a couple of good players in the transfer window and they are mounting a challenge for the title. I hadn’t seen them before so I wanted to watch the game. And I quite enjoyed it too.

But it’s sad that I can only live the life of a groundhopper these days thanks to someone else’s GoPro.

The next task was to have a play around with that site where I have to send my medical expenses claims.

After much binding in the marsh I seem to have made it see a kind of sense and managed by chocolate time to upload all the receipts that I could find.

My cleaner came by with more supplies and the day’s post. We had a chat about this and that (I’m keeping well clear of chatting about “the other”) without solving any real problems and then I came in here to attack the paperwork.

Almost straight away I found two more receipts but I suppose that it’s like that. But now anyway I have about 5 different piles of paper that need either merging together or putting in the medical folder for the next batch of medical claims.

But where’s it all going to end?

Tea was a stuffed pepper with pasta. A lovely meal, especially when followed by home-made apple crumble

So now I’m going to have another 20 minutes filing and then go to bed

But it’s a mystery where things go to in this place. I’ve lost yet another clip for these puttees and I’ve not been anywhere for it to disappear to.

And did I really have this prescription? Or is the doctor imagining it?
It could be that, I suppose. I was told that he was the doctor on duty when they were filming the remake of “The Invisible Man”
After an accident on the set he went to see the doctor and the receptionist announced him
"I’m busy right now" said the doctor. "Tell him that I can’t see him at the moment"

Thursday 29th August 2024 – THEY’LL BE DANCING …

… in the streets of TNS tonight!

For the first time ever, after over 30 years of trying, a Welsh football club has finally qualified for a Group stage of a European competition.

Admittedly, it’s only the Europa Conference, the least of the three competitions, but it’s a Group stage nevertheless. So hats off to manager Craig Harrison and his team. And to Chairman Mike Harris who has supported the team, the League, and Welsh club football in general since the mid-nineties

It’s quite fair to say that his support has somewhat distorted the power dynamics of the League, not always in any way that is favourable to to the other clubs and this minimum of €3,000,000 prize money will distort it even more. But it’s still a magnificent achievement

What would also be a magnificent achievement would be if I were able to go to bed before 23:00 but again last night I fell way short – or, rather, overshot rather badly. I don’t know what I’m doing or where the time is going these days but everything seems to be taking so long.

There was no reason at all to be late last night but nevertheless it was approaching midnight when I finally hit the hay.

The good news was that I didn’t need much rocking. I was asleep quite quickly and despite waking up a couple of times for no good reason, there I stayed until the alarm went off at 07:00.

Then it was a rather undignified stagger into the bathroom to sort myself out and have a good wash. And then a lap or two around the apartment collecting up the dirty clothes and the like, and setting the washing machine off on the go. I’m running low on clothes again.

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night and more importantly, to see who went with me. Nerina came the other night, which made a pleasant change from members of my family, but I’m still living in hope that Castor, Zero and TOTGA will come back at some point.

No such luck last night though. I had another one of these phantom awakenings. I awoke being sure that I’d heard the alarm for a big Welsh football team whose name I’ve forgotten up to the place opposite Arbroath where I’d come to buy some things. The two of us came back down to the ground ready to meet the players and to explain our tactic and hope that they’d enjoy it but I would of course be like a fish out of water if I confronted the players because I had the ability to find out what they would do about him and this game of games and nothing at all about the Game of Thrones

And if anyone can make any sense of that little lot, please let me know.

I was at work and I actually had a date with my Greek friend. Of course people in the Diffusion service heard about it and contacted me to chivvy me and tease me about it but I didn’t pay it any attention. It wasn’t until they started talking about what she was going to eat for breakfast that I began to think much more carefully about what was going on. Suddenly I had a mail but couldn’t find out who it was from but it was about the following day and it was headed “breakfast”. Looking down the list was like a breakfast that you could order from the place where we were staying, whether it was a Continental breakfast or Healthy breakfast or Cooked breakfast etc. She’d chosen the Energetic breakfast, or someone had chosen it, and sent it to me. This is where I began to think “is it she who is coming to see me? Am I to expect a new keen energetic Greek friend or the old lethargic one? I’m not too sure. Or is she finally going to forget that she’s a human being and participate in some of the joys of being human? I don’t know. It all sounded too good to be true to me and if they do sound too good to be true then they usually are. We shall see

That was rather a strange dream too. But as for my Greek lady-friend, she was strange too. Whenever I was “with” someone else she was attaching herself to me in a rather bewildering fashion to such an extent that even Roxanne noticed, but when I was on my own she kept a very considerable distance away from me. It was a shame really because she was a lovely girl, so much so that if I had ever had to choose between her and the Irish girl who also kept a very discreet distance from me, I would have had quite a struggle. However, both of them had far more sense than to ever become seriously entangled with me and I can’t say that I blame them. I know that if I ever were given the choice, I’d untangle myself quite rapidly, and hats off to Nerina who lasted almost nine years

That’s the first road sign that we’ve seen for Middle Earth, The Falls of Gondolin, and that’s where we turn off on our adventure and side-track ourselves in that direction to find out what Tolkien wrote when he wrote about the fall of the city, see who was involved and what the story and what the story was all about

Yes, THE FALL OF GONDOLIN is not a place but a book, one of the adventures of Middle-Earth written by Tolkien. But you could immediately imagine it being on a road sign referring to a cascade of water somewhere in the vicinity

The nurse came round and sorted me out, but he didn’t stay long. He couldn’t make his wi-fi card reader connect to the internet to read my health card so he took it with him to return later.

By now the washing was finished so I emptied the machine and hung everything up, then went for breakfast and to carry on READING MY BOOK ON THE ICKNIELD WAY for a while. These ancient books are really quite interesting and absorbing.

While I was at it, I did some research into the author. He was called Edward Thomas and is much better-known as a poet. But despite him being married and of somewhat senior years, he enlisted in the Artists Rifles in World War I and was killed at Arras in 1917

It was another slow start to the day but once I’d managed to wind myself up I attacked the second one of my outstanding projects for the radio.

That’s now finished too, although as usual, I’ll go through the text that I’ve written and there will probably be several rewrites and amendments before it’s ready for recording

Just a couple more holes to fill in in my sequence before I can carry on roaring off into the sunset.

But I still am struggling somewhat with this huge pile of concerts, trying to work out dates and running orders. And as seems to be the case, we have nothing at all for weeks and then half a dozen concerts on the same day. So which one do you choose?

That is definitely what you might call a “First-World Problem”.

There was the break for hot chocolate and home-made ginger cake (and thanks, John, for the helpful suggestion) and also, regrettably, to crash out for a while.

My cleaner brought up the post this afternoon, but no Health Card. Either the nurse forgot or else he still couldn’t make his card reader connect.

But then we had the football – TNS v the Lithuanian champions, FC Panevezys

TNS had, to everyone’s surprise, including their own, won 3-0 away from home in the first leg. But with no fit striker they simply packed the midfield and played possession football for the whole 90 minutes.

It ended up as a 0-0 draw, which also surprised no-one, but that as all that they needed to go through the final stage of the qualifying tournament to reach the Group stages, the first Welsh club to do so since Welsh clubs began to compete in European competition following the creation of the League of Wales in 1992

Strangely enough, TNS DID have a striker on the bench.

A couple of weeks ago, in an effort to avoid a fixture pile-up, they sent out what was effectively a reserve team to play Y Fflint. In the close season they had signed a winger from Caernarfon, Sion Bradley, and in the game at Y FFlint they played Bradley as a makeshift centre-forward.

And badger me if he didn’t score a hat-trick

Had it been me in charge of TNS I’d have put him on the field tonight up front to see if lightning would strike twice

However, my opinion is that why TNS signed Sion Bradley was not that they wanted him or needed him, but it was to stop him going to Connah’s Quay to replace Jordan Davies.

No tea tonight regrettably. The football came in the way of all that. So I’ll go to bed hungry and have a good breakfast in the morning.

At least I’ll be in some kind of shape. There will be some heavy heads at Park Hall in the morning

But that reminds me. Amongst the crowd celebrating at Park Hall Stadium tonight was a Polar Bear
He went up to the bar and said "a double gin and …. lemonade"
"What’s with the pause?" asked the barman
"I was born with them" replied Nanook

11th May 2024 – I’VE HAD A …

… footfest this afternoon. It’s the semi-finals of the play-offs to decide which Welsh team will take the fourth place allotted to Wales in European Club competition in the forthcoming season.

TNS will go into the Champions League, hoping to qualify for the group stages at long last

Connah’s Quay and Y Bala will go into the Europa League by virtue of finishing second and third, and another place in the Europa League due to Wales will be awarded to the winner of the playoffs

And so we started off with Y Drenewydd v Penybont followed by Caernarfon v Cardiff Metro.

As you might expect, I was quite looking forward to it all. And for the first time since I can’t remember, I was actually in bed before 23:00. And that’s not something that happens all that often these days. I could have been in bed much earlier than I was too but with all of the aches and pains that I was carrying, it was really difficult to actually get into bed.

With having this early night, I was looking forward to a long, undisturbed sleep but it wasn’t to be. It was a really disturbed, turbulent night.

There was another phantom alarm call and I forget how many of these we’ve had just recently. I’ve no idea what’s going on with them – where they are coming from and what they are doing – but it’s certainly confusing.

When the real alarm went off I found that it was easier to move out of bed. Many of the aches and pains had gone and the pain in my hip had reduced a little and I could lift my leg more.

So now that I was out of bed I went to the bathroom and then into the dining area for my medication.

Having done that I set out the room for the nurse and came in here to see what’s happening in the big wide world. But as any student of history will tell you, the news today is just the same things happening to different people in different places at different times.

After the nurse had gone, having given me a shopping list of items needed, I came in here for a relax. And then I listened to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I had another niece last night. It was a non-existent niece, someone small and petite. She sat and we chatted for ages about her course and the future. When she was ready to go I asked her where she was staying. She hadn’t booked anywhere so I told her that my settee was really comfortable and she was welcome to stay on it. She wondered how any other person was going to stay there because there were two nieces wandering around and how I was going to distinguish which was which too. That was easy because one had a tie with a small emblem on it. The other one had a tie with a big emblem on it so I could distinguish them by that. I could see that this was going to be complicated but it didn’t seem to bother me on the ground that it’s all going to work out normally anyway. Then we had someone coming, brandishing a gun and being obnoxious. I don’t know what he wanted or anything like that but he totally disrupted everything that we were trying to do.

That’s nothing new. Whenever I was trying to do something back in the old days, there would always be someone coming along being obnoxious and trying to disrupt whatever it was that I was doing. And if there was a young girl involved anywhere, you could bet your life that they’d be down in droves to put le baton dans la roue as they say around here.

Then at one point a girl was pouring some new information into my travelling laptop. I was very concerned so I awoke to try to stop her but just at the point where it became liquid memory she began to pour the liquid memory I had to shout at her to make her stop and I really did shout as well. I washed hem and got ready and ended up back in bed until the alarm

Yes, I really did shout in the middle of my sleep. It’s a good job that these walls are 1m20 of solid granite or whatever would the neighbours have said?

Then we finished off with this complicated story about addition and subtraction over the numbers. I had quite a batch to do which I did mainly right and managed to ensure my team’s presence in the Scottish League 2 next season

And that reminds me – we have the first leg of the playoffs between Stranraer of Scottish League 2 and East Kilbride of the Scottish Lowland League at some point this weekend.

And then I had a message. There’s an “issue” simmering in the UK that’s been simmering away for almost 30 years. I think that I’ve mentioned this before. It’s now erupted and like Pandora’s Box, once the lid is off then that’s it.

There’s a considerable amount of work that needs to be done that should really have been done 40 years ago but it wasn’t, and the events of the last 28 years haven’t helped. So if you see me loitering on Boots Corner any time, you’ll know why I’m there.

After this I crashed out – from 10:00 until 11:50. Dead to the World as well. But not that I’m complaining this time because I saw Zero. While I was asleep this morning I was with a former friend. I’d finally managed to persuade him to come to see me with the intentions of thrashing out some programme about repairing all these cars that I have. I’d walked down this track through this forest and encountered Zero playing in a school playground so we’d chatted but that was all. I pushed on and came across my former friend and we began to chat. I was going to tell him that I had £90:000 for the programme but we never reached that far in the discussion. We had several bikes ad had to move them by moving two, dropping them down, running back for two more and advancing lie this. At one point I had to run back miles because the exhaust had dropped off a motor bike we were moving. While I was up on top of this grassy bank my former friend came back to see what I was doing so I showed him. He was furious. “this is jus attention to detail” he raged and urged me to hurry up. By now this grassy bank had changed into a roof with a chimney and some dormer windows and I couldn’t work out how to descend. I thought that manoeuvring by holding on to the chimney and pivoting round by hanging on to the edge of the dormer window would be my best bet but the window opened and I was left dangling in thin air with no prospect whatever of improving my position.

It was really nice to see Zero of course but this “no prospect of improving my position” sounds like how my finances will be in a few months after the news that I received earlier.

By now, breakfast had become lunch so I fuelled up with food and then settled down to watch the football.

Y Drenewydd finished 4th in the league and Penybont 7th so the game was held at Drenewydd. But home advantage counted for nothing as they were swept aside by what can only be described as a Penybont masterclass.

The game finished 5-0 for Penybont and believe me – Y Drenewydd were lucky to get nil. They were awful. It wasn’t just that Penybont were so good but that Y Drenewydd offered nothing at all

The other game between 5th and 6th and played at Caernarfon in front of a massive crowd was much more exciting.

Caernarfon roared down the left flank with a combination of Louis LLoyd and Morgan Owen more times than you can mention but the final ball was always either too short of too long.

On the other hand the Met soaked up the pressure and tried to hit on the breakaway and had three excellent chances to score but couldn’t find the target.

The game was drifting to a 0-0 draw and penalties when Marc Williams drilled a powerful shot through a crowd of players into the net

And as Cardiff Metro were throwing everything forward to try to equalise in the closing stages a breakaway involving Sion Bradley and Adam Davies saw Davies score a second for the Cofis

So the final next weekend will be between Caernarfon and Penybont and played at Caernarfon.

And then, dear reader, I crashed out again. And for an hour or so too.

Tea tonight was one of my breaded quorn fillets with baked potato and salad. I know that it’s monotonous, but it’s also delicious.

So that’s all that I’m doing tonight. I’m going to try to be in bed early and see if Zero will come back into my dreams.

And I’ll tell her "I dreamed about you this morning"
"Did you?" she’ll reply.
"No" I’ll answer. "You wouldn’t let me".

Saturday 30th March 2024 – MY BROCCOLI STALK …

… soup was absolutely delicious at lunchtime.

chop up an onion and fry it in a heavy duty saucepan
dice your broccoli stalk and a potato into very small pieces and add them to the fried onion, and fry them
add your herbs – I used coriander, chervil, marjoram and chives – a stock cube and some garlic, and fry them with everything else
when you’re satisfied that all is going well, add enough of the water that you saved yesterday from blanching the carrots and broccoli florets – make sure that the stuff above is covered and remains so throughout the entire process
simmer away on a low heat for about 20 minutes
add a tub of soya yoghurt and whizz it all up with your whizzer
serve with fresh black pepper and fresh-baked bread

That’s what I call a really decent meal for a lunchtime.

When I blanch my broccoli for freezing I only blanch the florets. But one of these 99 cents special offers of broccoli is usually more stalk than florets so you have to be inventive, and broccoli stalk soup is the way forward

However I wish that I knew the way forward out of my current sleep issues because they reared their ugly head today, and in spades too.

Last night was a late night again. Once more I couldn’t seem to have my tasks completed in anything like a reasonable time. They do seem to drag me down these days and like anything else around here, it’s never-ending.

Finally, hours later than intended, I managed to find my way into bed.

Once in though, I slept right the way through until the alarm went off without the slightest interruption, which is quite strange these days. Usually, the slightest noise awakens me, so I wonder if it’s something to do with one of the pills that I take just before going to bed.

When the alarm went off I fell out of bed again and went to check the blood pressure. 15.5/8.9 compared to last evening’s 15.9/10.1. So not a great deal of difference.

After the medication I tidied up in the kitchen and arranged everything for the nurse to come. She was her usual cheerful self today and it didn’t take her long to sort me out. I told her about the issues with the pharmacy and she thinks that I ought to see my GP about the blood tests.

My opinion is that they are called for by the hospital so it’s up to the hospital to decide whether I need them or not, and as for my injections, I’m in the hospital in 3 weeks time and if I don’t have them for 3 weeks, there’s plenty of time for the hospital to catch up

Back in here, there was nothing on the dictaphone yet again from the night, and even though that usually signifies a decent sleep it’s still disappointing because, as I have said before… "and on many occasions too" – ed … going on my travels is the only fun that I have these days.

Back in the old days before my health finally gave out, I’d always be travelling. And not just in vehicles either, but on foot. I’ve roamed miles over places like the Long Mynd in Shropshire, moors in Scotland, Arctic tundra in Greenland and Northern Canada and so on.

Who will ever forget my famous journey when I nipped out for a couple of hours in 2014 and ended up roaming for miles through the Pyrenees in Southern France, Spain and Andorra for several weeks?

But returning to last night, even though there was nothing on the dictaphone I do have a recollection of something else to do with Ford Cortinas scattered all over Crewe and that’s a regular, recurring dream.

Apart from making broccoli stalk soup, most of the day has been dealing with radio stuff, sorting out music for the next few programmes. Time to restart work after being away on a course for a week. and I’m still thinking and talking in Welsh when I talk to myself.

There was a lot of progress made with the radio stuff but I would have done more had I not crashed out.

And I crashed out good and proper for a couple of hours too, the deepest that I have ever been too and it was really uncomfortable too, really, really uncomfortable. I was so far out that I wouldn’t have come back for a week.

Nevertheless I came round and wandered off for my hot chocolate. And there was something on the dictaphone from when I’d crashed out, and that doesn’t happen too often either. I was on my way to see my sister and my brother. They had given me directions but the closer I came to where they were supposed to be, the less sense the directions made. I ended up on an island, a long narrow sandspit that was completely built up with a big apartment building. As I approached the front door there was a man there so I hurried and he held the door for me to enter. Inside I went into the lift and came out on the first floor. I asked on the radio which apartment they were in but their answer was garbled so I asked which floor and they said “top”. I went back into the lift and came out at the top and was now in the open air countryside, still heavily built up. I asked if they were on the water side or the inside but the reply was “down here” so I went down the road. There was still no trace of them so I asked which house they were in. They replied that there was nothing near them but a pub. There was nothing whatever like that where I was but searching around I came across a village name something like Rhydymwyn (but wasn’t) so I asked if that name meant anything to them. There was no reply to that – I’d gone out of range obviously and lost radio contact, so I must have been miles away, so I gave it up zs a bad job.

The likelihood of me ever wanting to meet my brother and sister would be so remote that they wouldn’t have to go to the trouble of giving me false directions to keep me away.

But the island, the long thin sandspit, reminds me very much of Long Beach Island in New Jersey. That was where I went to celebrate the Millennium. I flew from Brussels Airport, where I was interviewed by Flemish TV – in Flemish – to New York and hired a car, then just drifted around until I found somewhere nice.

And LONG BEACH ISLAND REALLY IS NICE TOO. I had a wonderful time out there.

TOTGA had just been abandoned by her husband and was left alone with a small baby. I invited her to join me on the trip
"Where would be staying?" she asked
"We’ll work that out when we arrive. Just drive and find somewhere nice"
"Actually, it’s not really convenient"

A few years later we were talking and she said "I’d have come with you if you’d had a place booked to stay, you know."

It was then that I realised what a lucky escape she’d had. In 2015 I slept out on the trail every night in Northern Labrador and Northern Québec, timber wolves howling in the distance and something or other scratching at Strider’s truck cap, wanting to come in and share the sleeping bag with me.

TOTGA would have had a heart attack a long time before that if she’d had to share a lifetime with me. Nerina was the adventurous type and would have been fine, but I’m sure that I tried her spirit a few times

But just in case you are wondering, these people who figure quite often in my dreams, like TOTGA, Castor and Zero and so on, they are actually real people whom I’ve encountered, or even had a close encounter, at some time or other and who have obviously left a very great impression on me.

There was football on the internet later – TNS v Cardiff Metropolitan in the other Welsh Cup semi-final.

To everyone’s surprise, the Met raced into a 2-0 lead but of course it couldn’t last. TNS changed out of first gear and off they roared.

TNS’s overwhelming dominance of the Welsh domestic game wouldn’t bother me all that much if they could take it further. But they are knocked out of European competition at the first hurdle and they really ought to be doing much better than

It would really be nice if they could make it to a European group stage for once and have a real stab at something worthwhile.

And it would be nice if other clubs could do well too, emulating Hwlffordd who actually made it through to a second round last season.

Tea tonight was baked potato with vegan salad and one of these breaded quorn fillets that I like. But aren’t plates heavy when they fall on your foot? I’m glad that there was just a quorn fillet on it at that moment and nothing else.

But now I’m off to bed. We lose an hour tonight of course with the change of calendar, and I have the nurse coming which is a pain. I need to be up early and have everything ready so I hope that the alarm works.

Not like back in the old days when I was always late for school
"And why are you always late?" asked the exasperated schoolmaster
"Please sir" I explained "there’s eight in our family but the alarm was only set for seven so I had to miss out."

Tuesday 19th March 2024 – I’M RATHER LATE …

… writing my notes tonight as I’m in the middle of an exciting, busy week this week.

We’re having a footfest right now – on Thursday there’s a World Cup qualifying match between Cymru and Finland, then on Friday there’s Cymru under-21s in a Youth Cup qualifying match against Lithuania.

On Saturday there’s league football where Y Bala entertain a stuttering Connah’s Quay Nomads, who last weekend lost their third game in a row for the first time in 9 years, and then Sunday in the Scottish FA’s Challenge Cup, it’s the final between Airdrie and TNS, where the latter attempt to bring the Cup out of Scotland for the first time ever apart from when Berwick Rangers won it.

Tonight though it was the turn of the Welsh Premier League’s representative 11 to take on England’s National League team at Stebonheath, the home ground of Llanelli FC.

The match was a very tight affair with few chances for either side but a beautiful free kick right on the stroke of half-time from Caernarfon’s Sion Bradley was enough to win it.

How ever it could all have been so different but for a brilliant save from Y Bala’s goalkeeper Kelland Absalom deep into stoppage time.

It’s not quite the heady 4-0 win at Caernarfon 2 years ago but it makes up for the 1-0 loss at Altrincham last season

It’s an exciting annual competition this, but wouldn’t it be nice if they could broaden the challenge a little and include semi-pro teams from Scotland and the two Irelands, and make it a real league.

That’s not all the football by the way, but the match in this strange European amateur challenge competition between second-division Llantwit Fadre and Enfield Town isn’t being broadcast anywhere as far as I can see.

That was an interesting match in the previous round when Llantwit Fadre, the minniows in the competition, knocked out the Danish club that had founded the competition.

Anyway, I digress … "again" – ed …

Last night, despite finishing my notes with time to spare, there’s that much to do at the end of the evening that it was still later than I would have liked before I ended up in bed and it’s the kind of thing that is getting on my nerves.

But once in bed I actually had a good sleep and to my surprise, I was wide-awake quite early. So much so that I was actually up before the alarm went off. And it’s been a long time since that happened.

After taking the blood pressure – 14.2/8.5, so it must have been a calm, refreshing night because before going to bed it was 16.2/9.4 – I went off to take the medication and then did some tidying up of the medical stuff in the living room and rearranged it all.

Mind you, I needn’t have bothered. The nurse apparently forgot me, or some such thing, because he never turned up to wind on my puttees. That was really annoying because I had to wait around when I had plenty of other things to do.

Mind you I’m seeing him in the morning when he comes to inject me and take my blood sample, so we’ll discuss the matter then.

There were the dictaphone notes to transcribe. Not many of them again, which is disappointing. I’d travelled to Limoges on a job. Then I was relaunching my delivery service. There was a big building there that was occupied by a company called Locanest which gave me the impression that it was actually one of these cubicle rental-types of places. I thought that that might be a good place to go in order to hand out some leaflets. I tracked down the building, parked up outside and went in. A followed the signs and walked through a door into a room where there were about 20 or 30 people buzzing around. This looked like Locanest’s head office but no-one took the slightest bit of notice of me, even the people who were coming past. After I’d been standing there a few minutes I said “it’s OK, don’t rush, don’t bother. I can stand here all day if I have to”. Some girl piped up something about “well, we all have our work to do, we all have our jobs to do. We have to do them here” to which I replied “yes. So as I said, I’m quite happy to stand around all day. We can all stand around all day and that will be fine”. Eventually someone came to see me and to talk to me.

Yes, I can be sarcastic in a crisis. The keys to this kind of problem are

1 – Unlimited time
2 – Unlimited money – well, in a realistic sense

It brings back many happy memories of AN EX-NEIGHBOUR OF MINE who in a similar situation once said "I’ll stay here as long as they will" and then if you have the time, you can grind them down with your persistence and patience.

A schoolfriend of mine once told me that his parents went to see someone in his office but he had persistently refused to see them in the past. So having been stonewalled by the receptionist yet again, they sat down at a table, took from a bag that they had taken a thermos flask of tea, a pile of sandwiches and a couple of good books, and prepared for a siege.

It didn’t take them long to be seen after that.

Of course, if you have the money too so that there’s no pressing need to be elsewhere, then it’s an even more comfortable situation to be in.

Unfortunately, these days, the competitive spirit in these kinds of situations is evaporating rapidly and the response now is to “call Security” and have you bodily ejected from the premises. As I said the other day, the world is changing, and it’s not changing for the better. The lunatics have taken over the asylum.

So with no nurse, I prepared for my Welsh lesson. And despite putting a lot of effort into it, I still wasn’t happy with my performance today. I need to improve, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … so here’s hoping that this Easter course will inject some life into me.

It was our last day today before Easter and lessons don’t restart until 9th April. So it’s a long time to go from after my Easter course finishes until we restart. I shall have to think of a cunning plan. Mind you, with all this football that I’ll be watching, there might be some more stuff that will stick if I’m lucky.

Towards the end of the lesson I caught myself just as I was about to have one of these moments where my lights go out. That could have been embarrassing had I slipped over the edge into the void so I was lucky. But it’s actually disturbing how easily it happens. What with that and my double vision, it’s a good job that I no longer drive.

While we’re on the subject of double vision … "well, one of us is" – ed … I rang the hospital 4 times ti cancel my appointment but with no luck at all to be put through to the Opthalmology department. Then I was in my lesson, and after the lesson it was too late.

That’s a shame, isn’t it?

This afternoon I’ve not done much. Just a pile of personal stuff. That took me up to teatime and my taco roll with rice and veg. Plenty of stuffing left for a base for a vegan curry tomorrow with my naan bread.

But were OK for cheese and so on at the moment because my faithful cleaner was at LeClerc and she stocked up. Apparently it’s selling out quite quickly so next time she goes, she’ll have to buy all that she sees

So with everything finished, I’m off to bed. I suppose that tomorrow I’d better start work again after a few lazy days once the nurse has been to inject me, if he remembers.

But I’m sorry that I missed that eyesight test. I suppose that I could always reply by saying "I couldn’t see the entrance to the building" – that would confuse them.

The last time that I went to have my eyes tested, the optician told me "I’m terribly sorry, but the results of your tests aren’t very good"
"That’s bad news" I said. "Can I see them?"
"Probably not" said the optician

Saturday 3nd March 2023 – I’M FED UP …

… of falling asleep during the day and not having anything done.

Fighting off wave after wave of sleep while trying to watch the football, I ended up crashing out for several hours later on and I’ve even crashed out while typing these notes.

It beats me what’s responsible for it. One of these medicines, that’s for sure, but which one? But all I can say is that I’m glad that I don’t drive any more, because this would be driving me up the wall.

It was another late night last night, simply because of the highlights of the football for the evening being posted. Connah’s Quay’s defeat at Bala means that TNS would be handed the championship yet again if they win against Cardiff Metro this afternoon.

So on that sombre note I wandered off to bed, later than usual, and settled down for a good night’s sleep.

When the alarm went off and awoke me, I was dreaming about people wearing different clothes, being in different epochs that they chose. I could just imagine the scene when awakening, asking for a pair of 1950s undies, something like that. Think of how confusing it would be for people. But there are many people who don’t want to live in the modern world today

And I for one, entangled in the technological jungle, think fondly of my past life in Crewe where we didn’t have these new-fangled inventions like the wheel to bother us and where the most exciting thing that happened was when that tree fell down in 1847 and people still talk about it now.

They have these blue plaques on some houses that say something like “between 1903 and 1926 this house was inhabited by no-one of any importance”.

First thing this morning was to check the blood pressure. 15.4/8.5 this morning, compared to 13.0/8.3 last night. So something during the night must have wound me up. I shall have to go back and see.

It’s nice though to see it generally falling. They were quite worried about that at one time. Mind you, I wish that I knew how to control it without medication.

On that note I staggered into the kitchen for another helping of medication

Back in here I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night, apart from discussing historical underclothes of course. This is where my Wing for the Air Force has been split up and the daughter of one of the pilots, a young girl probably 7 or 8, has been kidnapped somewhere between Iceland and Greenland. It was the patrol’s light-hearted way of doing things that had enabled this to happen Now, their next job was to try to find this little girl even though they had these transatlantic patrols to maintain all the time every so many hours they were out flying over the ocean

This sounds as if it might relate to part of the novel that I’ll never ever write now, where I had my anti-submarine patrols bases in Iceland, Greenland, Newfoundland, the Caribbean, Brazil and the Azores fighting the Battle of the Atlantic in 1943.

Later on I stepped back into that dream again afterwards … "which dream?" – ed … but there was another part of this dream that was based in an office where I worked. I’d applied for some annual leave but it was over a busy period. The annual leave was about my health issues. On one particular afternoon I was being confirmed into some kind of religion or other ready for my eventual death but when the boss called me in he talked to me about the possibility of promotion, how I needed to show that I was a firm, loyal and committed member of his team in order to be promoted. Feeling that it was rather late now for me to change my ways I basically mentioned to him what was happening and asked him what I could do about it to ensure that I’d be promoted, which event should I abandoned, which postpone, which cancel, what should I do with something else so that my cancelling it with some kind of higher position in the league or in a higher division would be a much better option for everyone than me going off and being treated for my health issues.

Then I had a dream about being in the Air Force with people in the front line, forming this special squadron that must be provisioned properly when requested. Bomber Command tried to hoist onto it a raid that was out of their jurisdiction – involving bombing somewhere south of Crewe and flattening it. The senior officers objected. In the end senior officers were put into the plane but had to board it in senior order or near enough. In the lower ranks what they did was to quite simply transfer everyone to shore-going establishments where there were no provisions to attack anything.
Then the dream changed later on. I was back in it when it was 3 officers who were on their way to the camp which was in the middle of Shropshire, lost in a backstreet somewhere. They asked me about it and I told them where it was, but decided to follow them just in case they weren’t who they said they were and were up to no good. It was a good job that I did because I noticed a couple of things that brought my attention to them.

Why would anyone want to bomb anywhere south of Crewe and flatten it? In my opinion, Crewe would be an ideal target for all of that. During the “Baedecker Raids” a stick of bombs fell on Crewe and caused £14,000,000 of improvements and we could do with a few more of that type of thing.

The town centre right now looks like Dresden after an Allied air raid and I shudder to think of what they’ll erect in place of the bus station and the shops that were there. As the current King Charles said a while back, "You have to give this much to the Luftwaffe. When it knocked down our buildings, it didn’t replace them with anything more offensive than rubble"

What beats me about the current plans for the town centre are firstly, why are they building the multi-storey car park first when there is nothing for anyone parking there to see or do in the town centre? And secondly, why are they building shops there when they couldn’t find tenants for the shops that were there just now?

But as long as they build a new bus station complete with public convenience. As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I passed my Biology “O” level with flying colours thanks to the helpful drawings on the walls of the gentleman’s rest room and I want others to have the same chance as I had.

Having dealt with all of that I had a few things to do and then I went for my lovely cheese on toast. It would be nicer if the bread would rise more, but I really must work harder than I do with it. But “gently” is the word, don’t fight it. Pretend that I’m massaging Zero’s clavicles.

What I’ve been doing today, when I’ve not been asleep, is going through that mass of stuff that I sorted out last night and splitting it up into tracks. I’ve not done much, because I’ve been asleep for quite a while today, to my bitter regret.

There’s a few done, but I really could have done with doing a few more.

Football on the internet, as I said today. TNS v Cardiff Metro. A win for TNS would see them win the championship with about 8 games to spare, which out of a 32-game season is some impressive going.

And as expected, they swept the Met aside in a canter and strolled to an easy 4-0 victory. And it should have been many more than that.

There’s no stopping TNS on the domestic front these days, but how I wish that they would transfer this form into Europe and win a few games there

Many people say that the dominance of TNS is killing the game, but the fact is that it’s the fans who are the winners because in the race to try to keep up with TNS, the quality of teams, matches and facilities has come on in leaps and bounds, so everyone is a winner.

But while we’re on the subject of football and winners, THIS ONE is the kind of game that I like. Where one club is pushing and pushing forward with wave after wave of attack and fail to produce anything, whereas the other team goes racing away downfield in a breakaway and score a goal from their only attack.

Tea tonight was another one of these breaded quorn filets that I like, with salad and baked potatoes. And the potatoes were so nice that I baked another one.

Rice pudding for afters too, and I can’t complain at all.

Tomorrow I have some hummus to make, and also some fruit buns as I’m running out of those. That should keep me busy for an hour or so while I’m making my pizza, I suppose. There is some pizza dough left – I checked.

But the hummus will be nice, one batch with chilis and the other with olives and I’ve forgotten the sun-dried tomatoes again. I’m not sure what I have that will go with olives in a hummus.

Garlic, obviously. That goes without saying. never any danger whatever of vampires coming around here with the amount of garlic that I use.

When I was at Castle Dracula in Romania that time in the early 1990s I actually met a vampire there. We had a race together and it was neck and neck all the way.

But seriously, when we were kids the neighbour’s boy told us that he’d been reading a book where someone killed a vampire with a stake.

"That’s nothing!" we retorted. "Our mother could do that with her egg and chips"

They are actually running a remake of Bram Stoker’s DRACULA so I shall take myself away and carry on reading it while I wait for everything to quieten down so that i can dictate my radio notes.

It’s one of these books that has already been reworked to correspond with the New World Order and stars a trans-sexual cross-dressing vampire. Known, as you might expect, as Count Dragula.

I’ll get my coat.

Thursday 10th August 2023 – I HAD ANOTHER …

… really mobile night last night. And a busy day too. Things seem to be warming up.

When the alarm went off this morning at 07:00 I was with a couple of people who were planning on going on a cycling tour. They were showing me their bikes and how the framework for the pannier fitted on. I could see that there was some recessed bolt holes in the frame and the pannier mounts slid down them and you just pushed a bolt through the frame and the bolt hole in the pannier outfit.

So not having beaten the first alarm I was still able to beat the second. And then after the medication and checking the mails and messages I listened to the rest of the night’s travels on the dictaphone. Nerina and I were going somewhere on a night out to Nantwich or Audlem, somewhere like that. We had to hurry to catch the bus. There was then some talk that we might stay over a couple of days so I had to find some clothes. I couldn’t find any so in the end I had to find an old suitcase of mine with some clothes in it. That was inside the cats’ house. I had to persuade the cats to leave their little house which took a long time. Then I had to take out my suitcase and look through it. I couldn’t find any trousers. I wasn’t sure if I could still fit in my jeans so I had to try on a pair. Then I couldn’t stand up. I needed help for that. In the end I tried them on when I was standing on the floor. I then looked at the time. It was something like 22:10 and the bus was going to leave any minute now. We were clearly going to miss the bus and then next one would make us ridiculously late so I began to think about going in the car and arriving quicker like that

And then I had another long dream that all immediately evaporated the moment I reached for the dictaphone. I can’t remember a thing at all about it. Not a thing. I’m soaked in sweat though so it must have been something interesting.

Later on I’d been somewhere to do something in connection with the group in which I played and we were on our way back. Coming from Congleton towards Crewe there was plenty of traffic. I had my foot down and was going quite quickly, passing the traffic wherever I could. There was a part where you came to a roundabout where the road split into two lanes. I went into the outside lane there and drove all the way down the outside of a line of vehicles, reached the roundabout, spun round the roundabout and came off at my exit, probably cutting in on someone else. The engine of the car cut out. I couldn’t restart it. I had to get out and push the car across the roundabout into a side road. There were vehicles in the way. I rolled into a vehicle. By now this roundabout had transformed itself. It wasn’t the roundabout in Hungerford Road where it was earlier on but now a roundabout back in Sandbach. It was where the guy who played drums lived. There was all sorts of things going on around this area, people using bad language etc. I thought “I wonder how my drummer’s family who were quite respectable people, were coping with what’s going on in the other houses and families around here”.

I was also at a huge factory place last night. 2 huge square glass buildings situated on the far side of a really wide river. The car parking was on one side of the river and you had to walk down a path and across a – not even a bridge but like a concrete path that went across the river and into the factory complex. We’d been there with a couple of people and walked back to the car park. I decided that I wanted to go back to look at some more of it. I said “I’ll be back shortly”, turned round and walked all the way back down the long path, across the concrete path across the river and back to the complex. It took me about 20 minutes to walk there and will take me another 20 minutes to walk back later plus however much time I’d want to spend walking around the factory complex. I’d left them sitting on a car park waiting for me. I’m not going to be very popular by the time I return. I thought to myself that I’d be lucky if they were still there waiting.

Finally my car needed some work doing on it so my father said that he’d help me if I took the car round to him. He lived in Norway north of Narvik so I said that I’d go round after work. While I was at work I was trying a cut-and-paste of a section of an image over an object in an image that I wanted to hide. For some reason I couldn’t make the piece that I’d cut out transfer over via a memory stick or an external hard drive or anything. There was a crowd of people round watching me including TOTGA. I carried on trying but it wouldn’t work. I said that I’d do it after work so a couple of people said that they’d stay behind to watch. Then I remembered that I had to go to see my father. At 16:00 I apologised to everyone who was disappointed that I was going, and set out. Narvik is a long way from Brussels and it was late in the evening. I was in Norway and seen the signs for Narvik. Somehow I’d missed my turning and ended up at a riverside on a gravel road looking at all these boats. I had to rurn round to retrace my steps to find where I’d gone wrong. Then I encountered a load of Volkswagens that had all been in accidents and were heading off somewhere. They had headlights taped into the wing with sellotape so that at least they’d have some light when it went dark. I remembered that my father’s wife had wanted me to sort out some money for her and do a couple of other things. By now it was really late at night. I was thinking that I have all this to do, fix my car, sort out my father’s wife, fix this image that needs doing and be back at work in Brussels in the morning. I’m just never going to fit all this in.

An hour or two were then spent working my way through my notes for my Welsh lesson. But as usual, with having a teflon brain, nothing is sticking.

The lesson itself passed quite quickly again but it was rather patchy. Some of the stuff I could do quite happily but some other stuff was rather … errr … challenging and I don’t know what I’m going to do about that. Nothing, I reckon. You can’t teach an old dog like me new tricks.

When the lesson was over I waded through the radio programme and finished off all of the notes for the second radio programme I’ve done this week. And who knows? I might even start a third tomorrow.

Another exciting task was to write an article for a Welsh newspaper. The new JD Cymru League season starts tomorrow so I’ve written a few hundred words about the teams competing and what I think of their chances

Whether or not it’s published is another thing entirely but it’s one of those things that has to be done by someone at some time.

Tea tonight was one of the vegan burgers out of the European Burger Mountain in the fridge with some pasta and veg in tomato sauce.

Tomorrow morning I have to nip into town early in the morning to do my shopping before the Welsh lesson. It’ll have me running around so I’ll need to have an early night and have some rest.

But if I go off on a few travels during the night in the same way that I have been just recently, I’ll need a rest to recover when I wake up.

Thursday 3rd August 2023 – YOU CAN TELL …

… what kind of night I had last night simply by looking at the dictaphone and counting the number of times I dictated something. We actually reached double figures, and it’s not every day that that happens.

Furthermore, I was actually up and about before the alarm went off too.

Only by a matter of a handful of seconds, it’s quite true, but nevertheless, it still counts. When I opened my eyes and saw that it was 06:59 on the fitbit I thought that I may as well make the effort.

One thing’s for sure is that I won’t be up early tomorrow. We had football tonight – Hwlffordd v B36 Torshavn in European competition.

1-0 down from the first leg, they rode their luck all through the first half and with half an hour to go actually managed to score a goal that made the score equal over the two legs.

The game went into extra time but Torshavn scored what can only be described as a “controversial penalty” to knock the Welsh side out. Manager Tony Pennock was quite right to be incensed but I notice that he kept very quiet about the penalty that I and the commentators would have awarded against his team earlier in the game to which the referee waved “play on”.

The post-match interviews were quite entertaining. Pennock came out with a few comments that reminded me of Ron Atkinson and his famous quote of “I never comment on referees – and I won’t break the habit of a lifetime for that prat!”

Centre-forward Ben Fawcett, who scored Hwlffordd’s goal, reminded me of Jim Finks, one-time coach of the New Orleans Saints gridiron team who once famously said “We’re not allowed to comment on the lousy officiating”

So with extra time being played, the game didn’t finish until long after 23:00 so it’s going to be a long night tonight.

It’ll be just like today when it took me an absolute age to actually start work – after a very late morning coffee.

And the first thing that I did was to sort out the music for the next radio programme. That took much longer than it ought to have done.

One thing that took the time was that I had to track down a certain track that I needed. In this programme, whenever it will be broadcast, we’ll be celebrating the birthday of a rather obscure musician.

Her partner plays a major rôle in our radio programmes and she actually wrote the words for one or two of his more rare songs and played keyboards on a couple. We can’t actually celebrate her birthday without playing some of her music.

While I was at it, I wrote the text for some of the music that I’ll be playing and I’ll write some more tomorrow. With a bit of luck, God’s help and a Bobby, I might have two radio programmes to prepare on Sunday.

And then there was the dictaphone. And I couldn’t believe the amount of stuff that was on it from the night. I was at the football last night. The town where I was living was a small French town roughly the size of Granville but in the interior down south. They were playing a game of football. I went along to watch the match. There was a lot happening that I’ve forgotten but something that sticks in my mind was that I was chatting to a group of people some of whom were young girls, schoolgirls or whatever. At one point the ball came over our way. I got off my chair and went to pick it up to throw it back in but then I found that I had real difficulty getting back to my feet. When I did, some girl had sat in my chair. I made some remark about it. She said that she’d sat in there first. I thought “never mind”. There was a couple of empty chairs around here and there so I took one of those, sat next to them and continued to watch the game. There was much more to it than this but I can’t remember now.

When the alarm went off I awoke with a real start. I was in such a deep sleep. I didn’t know where I was for a minute. When I looked round I thought that the cleaner was here. She was trying to tell me that she has to cut down her hours because one of her family needed help. I was trying to get my head round all this information. I looked at my watch and saw that it was 04:00 and I’d obviously dreamt the alarm somehow. That’s really surprising. It sounded so real too. It goes without saying that there was no cleaner here etc, just me waking up spontaneously for no good reason so I turned over and went back to sleep. I really couldn’t believe it.

Then a surprise for a friend of mine. We’d heard from a restaurant in St Malo that a well-known brand of gravy actually contained animal products. I went to make further enquiries and discovered that it was indeed true. I swapped a meal of greasy sausages and things like that for another kind of meal but I can’t remember what the other meal was now. I’m having a real problem remembering my dreams at the moment. I don’t know why that is.

There was another dream where I was having to see a heart specialist. He’d given me an appointment at 08:10. I went to see him and was there early. There were a couple of other doctors’ surgeries in the same place. One woman came in to sit down. Someone else came in, probably a doctor because he went into one of the side rooms. He then came out and began to talk to this woman about Patagonia and going to have an operation done there. That immediately appealed to me. I began to think about life in Patagonia, how I would go there, how I was going to travel, what I was going to do. I was all building myself up in this dream for a trip to Patagonia on the basis of absolutely no evidence whatsoever.

We were wandering around a place in rural Spain. I wanted to go to use the bathroom. I set out to find it. I went past a guy who had a box. He had 4 small logs in it. Sitting across the logs was a French bread pizza. He was trying to light the logs presumably to cook his pizza so I told him what a wonderful thing it was. He didn’t understand so I tried to say it in Spanish. He still didn’t understand me. Everyone with me asked me what I was doing so I explained. I found the bathroom and walked in. To my surprise it was just a communal room with about 6 WCs in it, no partitions or anything. You just sat there or stood there in full view of everyone else and did what you had to do. There was no blushing or anything like that from anyone except from me of course.

That was actually the first time that I’ve had a dream in Spanish.

There was a sequel to this dream as well. A young Spanish boy whose father went to discipline him. He suddenly had a huge pain in his groin that doubled him up. He was rolling around the floor in agony. While this was going on his son was there. This pain didn’t ease off until the guy decided that he’d change his mind about punishing his son. Once he’d made that decision the pain stopped

There was also something about a football match in Spain. While the father was doubled up in pain the opposition team grabbed hold of the football and tried to take a quick free kick and roared off down the field before the referee stopped them and brought them back. It was those two new players from Hwlffordd, Crossdale and the other one … “Owen” – ed … who were doing this.

There was something about cricket too, trying to explain it to a new player about how he could learn the game by watching so when his team was in he’d be out there and he could watch what was happening, then get himself out and come back in, then prepare to go back out again when his team was in, all kinds of stuff like that, this particular dream that I can’t remember the fine details now

And finally there was another dream that I’ve had before. I was with Nerina who was on a bike and I was on foot. We were chatting as she was cycling. We were in Stoke on Trent and came to a steep hill. Something had happened that she had done something that had not been the kind of thing that I would do. People had believed that we had separated. Nerina had strung them on a little. When we came to the steep hill there was a short cut for people on foot so I took it and she continued along the road. She fell in with one of these people who then began to ask her questions about what she was up to. When the short cut re-joined the road we joined up again. By now I was running up the hill and she was cycling. There was a couple of people standing on the pavement ahead of us, one of whom I recognised. A car that was coming up the hill suddenly mounted the pavement and hit these 2 people knocking them flying and drove off again. By now we’d all arrived at this particular point and we tried to ask one of these guys what exactly had happened

It’s no surprise that there was no time to do anything else other than this. There was tea of course, a leftover chili sin carné that was as delicious as ever, and then I dashed in here for the football.

Now the game is over and my notes are finished, I’m off to bed. I’m nipping into town on the bus tomorrow for a little shop and then I’ll probably be flat out asleep in the afternoon recovering from the effort.

That assumes that I wake up in time to go to the shops. Another night like last night and I won’t wake up for a week.

Tuesday 1st August 2023 – I’VE HAD AN …

… early tea tonight.

There’s football on the radio (not, unfortunately, on the internet) tonight, the return leg of Swift Hesperange of Luxembourg v TNS and I don’t want to miss it.

But I’m surprised that I was awake enough to listen to it because, once again, I’ve been asleep for much of the day unfortunately. It was another one of those nights about which I promised not to speak.

When the alarm went off I was flat out yet again and struggle to get to my feet before the second alarm went off.

After the medication it took me a while to wake up, and another late coffee again today. And once I was back in the Land of the Living, whenever that might have been, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. There was a whole night spent wandering around in the most bizarre kinds of places with all kinds of strange people. It went on for ever and ever and ever. I was in Canada at one point and all kinds of exciting places. The moment that I picked up the dictaphone everything completely evaporated. I remember nothing whatsoever except the fact of the huge variety of different things that I’d been doing but not exactly what I’d been doing.

And then we were at a football match. The opposition was taking a corner. A TNS defender yelled at everyone to leave the ball as it flew over. A Holywell player complained to all his team-mates about it. Everyone seemed to complain to everyone else about not intercepting this ball that flashed across the defence.

Later on at one point last night 3 or 4 of us were walking on the beach round by Parkgate, Neston, that area looking across to what was going on in Wales but we couldn’t see anything happening over there. Ironically, when I lived in Chester in the early 1970s I walked along the beach at Parkgate and Little Neston on several occasions

Someone posted a photo of a rare S-series Foden lorry with a showman’s body on the back of it, saying that he was going to part it out if anyone needed any spares. Someone took an injunction out in the Court against him doing that on the grounds that it was an extremely rare and historic vehicle and shouldn’t be broken up.

Finallt I’d been to school in Nantwich and met up with my mother and brother (I can’t keep them out of my dreams, can I?). We decided that we’d cycle home. We reached Shavington and went out on the old road towards the Hough. They’d been resurfacing it and there was a lot of loose gravel and stone etc. Cars were sliding everywhere. I made my way through to the other end to near Cobb’s Lane. When I turned round the other two weren’t behind me. I waited there but they didn’t show up. There was a huge car accident, cars and lorries etc sliding on the loose gravel, ending up on the wrong side of the road and shooting through the roundabout there. It was complete mayhem for a while. I was sitting there waiting thinking that if they have a problem they’ll phone me. The bus to Crewe turned up so I went to sit on the bus out of the rain – by now it was raining heavily. Still no-one showed up. Suddenly the bus started and set off. It went in a strange way that I’d travelled before in another dream at some point in the past, past a huge skyscraper-type building at the back of North Staffordshire that was some form of Bible college, past a historic church and a couple of castles. Everyone on this bus was asking the driver about these castles. He said that they’ll see 10 before the bus reaches the end of its run but they’s only counted 4 at this point. I was looking at my watch thinking that considering that I left at 17:00 for what would be a 15-minute run it will be 19:30 before I return home. I’m not going to want to take this trip more than once in my life. There’s still no phone call message from anyone to find out where they were for the last stretch of road that they hadn’t come to join me.

That road, incidentally, reminded me of the road alongside the Sioule from Menat towards St Gervais where Chateau Rocher is, and the road that runs at the back of Audley down towards Keele past where Heighley Castle used to be.

For the rest of the day, when I’ve been awake, I’ve been back in Canada with my trip around Labrador. Right now I’ve started to stumble across the Valard and Nalcor site operations.

All of that is extremely controversial. Having built the huge power station at Churchill Falls in the 50s and 60s and finding that they had no customers for the electricity, they sold the electricity to Québec Hydro for peanuts.

When Labrador developed in the 1980s the region had no other source of electricity to they had to buy their own electricity back from Québec at an extortionate price.

Since then, there has been a variety of projects to generate electricity, of which Muskrat Falls is the most controversial. Tribal areas have been devastated, hunting grounds destroyed, settlements flooded and electricity generated “somehow” ending up at St John’s, the Province’s capital in Newfoundland.

Add to all that the fact that cost and timescales have been dreadfully overrun, and even the conservative Canadian Broadcasting Corporation refers to “years of scandals related to Muskrat Falls”.

Financial and Project management in Newfoundland and Labrador is a history of calamity and disaster. It seems to me that no-one in the Government has the first clue about what they are trying to accomplish and end up lurching from one catastrophe to another.

Tea was a taco roll with rice and veg (and very nice it was too) and now that the football has had its disappointing end I’m going to bed.

Ready to fight another day, I don’t think. I may not be doing so well during the day but you’re certainly having your money’s worth during the night.

EPIC HALL

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

Tag Archives: Welsh Football

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