Tag Archives: www.youtube.com

LIVE: Friday 11th September 2026 – GUESS WHO …

Leave a Reply

… has forgotten to bring home from dialysis the charging cable for his laptop? That has knackered a good part of my day, that has, and no mistake.

There I was today, ready to plug my computer in so that I could read a book at breakfast, and there was my cable lead – Gone! And never called me “mother”. What kind of fool did I feel? What with phantom alarms, thinking that a ‘phone alert’ was a doorbell, and now, forgetting my charging cable, things are not going very well for me at the moment, are they?

Just like last night too. I ended up going to bed much later than I would have liked, and then I awoke at all of 03:42 (because I checked). Nevertheless, the period between then and the alarm at 06:29 seemed to pass so rapidly that I must have fallen asleep again.

For a change, I was quick out of bed and sitting on the edge, dressing myself. That’s not likely to happen too often, is it? And then, as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … sitting on the edge of the bed is one thing, actually standing up and moving is something else completely.

Eventually, though, I was sitting on my chair at my desk with the big computer running. Firstly, there was nothing on the dictaphone so I could leave that alone for the moment, and instead, I caught up with a few other important and outstanding things.

Round about 07:30, I could hear movement next door and began to smell the beautiful smell of coffee. That was the cue to move into the dining area where my friend was making coffee. I poured out a couple of mugs, and while we were drinking, we were chatting about the news and about the stupidity and the gullibility of those people on the other side of the pond.

Look at it this way – there are (say) 400 million people in the USA, of which roughly 21% are under 18, meaning that 79%, or roughly 316 million, are eligible for this enormous Trump bribe that he’s offering to the electorate (“after the midterms”, just like all of his other promises).

That works out at $1,580,000,000,000, or a whopping 1.58 trillion dollars, if my maths is correct. Now which economy can support giving away that much money? Yet people are falling for it, hook, line and sinker. They must be out of their minds.

Isabelle the nurse breezed into the apartment as usual. The Hound of the Baskervilles didn’t bark or even disturb himself. However, his tail began to wag and he lifted up one of his front legs so that she could reach his tummy to give it a tickle – all without saying a word.

She sorted out my legs and feet and then gave the Hound of the Baskervilles another tickle-tummy before leaving.

Once she’d gone, the Hound of the Baskervilles dragged his master off on walkies and I made my breakfast. And on going to read some more of my book, this is when I made that terrible discovery. So I had to eat my porridge and toast and drink my orange juice without reading, and I’m not used to that.

Once I’d finished, I came back in here where I crashed out at my chair – and for quite a while too. I was definitely in no mood to do anything. That’s how I’ve been feeling since I awoke this morning.

An hour or so later, I began to wake up and I began to write another chapter of my little story, taking a break at some point for a disgusting drink and the midday medication.

This afternoon, my faithful cleaner came round to do her stuff, so we set her a task to prove that she was worthy, as they said in MONTY PYTHON.

We decided that we’d leave her in charge of the Hound of the Baskervilles and we’d go to Noz.

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

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

Noz is the cheap shop in town where they sell all kinds of damaged goods, fire-damaged stock, short-dated stock and bankruptcy stock. I used to like going in there every weekend because there would always be something on offer that would improve my lifestyle or, in the food range, improve my diet for a short time.

The shop today, though, was nothing like how it used to be. I hardly found anything at all, except some almond milk for when I start making ice cream again and some vegan sugar-free ice cream. That looks as if it’s going to be really good, and I can’t wait to try it. And it was nice to be out and about in the open air for a change instead of being cooped up in here. I just wish that I could be out and about more often. And if I could, I’d be piling up with vegan ice cream from Noz.

On the way back, my friend went to Leclerc for some fuel, and we could see first-hand the mess that they are making of the car park as they try to install an overhead car park over the existing open-air parking. Apparently, it’s all to do with putting a new gallery of shops in underneath once the overhead bit is done, and I wish them luck with that.

Back here, I was totally exhausted after walking around the shops and had to sit down for a while, but it was very cute to see the Hound of the Baskervilles soar right across the car park to meet his master when his Auntie Cleaner let him out of the building. When I was married and we had four cats, they used to treat my departure and arrival with absolute indifference.

Later on, we had a little visit from a couple of gentlemen from Tunisia about a project that I have on the back burner, but after a while, I was persuaded that this project ain’t ever going to work, so I shall have to think of a “Plan B”. It seems that I’m right up to my ears in plans that aren’t working out right now. It’s all due to being ill, of course, but had I not been ill, I wouldn’t be living here, so it wouldn’t have been a problem anyway.

For tea, my friend made himself a burger and chips. I had nothing because firstly, I wasn’t hungry, and secondly, I had other fish to fry.

Like the football, for example. Another basement clash tonight, this time between Cambrian United and Trefynnon.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that Trefynnon are having a woeful start to the season. seven games played, one goal scored and just one point out of twenty-one. The team from the Rhondda are doing somewhat better with two wins and three draws from their seven.

Games like these are games that Trefynnon has to win if they are to haul themselves off the bottom, but gap in quality between these two teams, despite them being at the lower end of the table, is clearly evident.

Having said that, however, Trefynnon were in there fighting, and they didn’t give up. At 2-0 down, they continued to surge upfield whenever they had the chance, and eventually they pulled one back, but it was too little, too late.

Having seen the effort that some of their players put into the game, surely their luck must break through soon because, even though they are so far off the pace, they deserve something for their efforts.

When the match finished, I had a few things to do, and while doing them, I learnt something interesting.

In the past, the league was lucky if it had one four-figure crowd per season. I can realise seasons when there were none at all. So far this season, after eight rounds, we’ve had ten in the Premier League already and even a couple in the feeder leagues and in the cup. And with good reason too, because the quality of the football is far better than it ever was.

So right now, I’m off to bed. It’s gone 01:00 right now and I have to be up at 06:29 in the morning.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about Those guys from Tunisia … "well, one of us has" – ed … one of them said that when the Germans arrived in the country looking for Aryan ladies, his grandfather hid one in his cellar to keep her safe.
"That was nice of him" I said.
"But he didn’t do it for nothing, you know." he said, with a wink
"So why are you telling me?"
"Because I need your advice as to whether to persuade him to tell her that the Germans have gone."

0

Saturday 29th August 2026 – THIS WAS A

…rather uneventful day today, except that I had some good fortune at dialysis without even having to ask for it.

Well, I thought that it was good fortune, which it was at the time, but I changed my mind somewhat a little later.

Anyway, retournons à nos moutons, as they say around here. Last night, it was about 00:30 when I finally settled down under the bedclothes, and I know that I must have been asleep quite quickly because when I was dictating something in my sleep, I could tell that I was still sucking on the bedtime menthol and eucalyptus sweet.

And by the looks of things, we were back to how things were a week or two ago — waking up at some uncomfortably early hour and not being able to go back to sleep again. For the last week or so, I’ve been having a much better kind of sleep, but it’s not lasted all that long, has it?

When the alarm went off at 06:29, I dragged myself to the edge of the bed, but it still took a superhuman effort to haul myself upright, go to unlock the front door, and then head into the bathroom to sort myself out. Today, as well as a good scrub-up, there was a shave too, just in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant, but I’ve not seen her for ages.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night.

And while there was something on it, for sure, it’s something that the World is not yet ready to hear, and you in particular don’t want to hear it, especially if you’re eating your breakfast right now. Let’s just say that I was in the World War I trenches in Northern France and Belgium as a lieutenant with a Scottish company, and we were under heavy shelling. However, at some point, Zero put in an appearance.

So how long is it since one of my three favourite young ladies has put in an appearance? I thought that they had all dropped off the end of my dreaming sequence just as The Vanilla Queen did a few years ago, but at least we’ve managed to have Zero back.

The nurse turned up again and we continued our discussion about football from yesterday. I told him about the Trefelin – Rhydaman match last night, but he didn’t seem interested. Anyway, THE HIGHLIGHTS ARE NOW ON LINE although they show nothing like all of the tension ane emotion that there was in this game.

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

Well, not so much of it, because he started to talk about Peterborough Cathedral so I went off to do some research. I knew that the abbey had been founded on a false and fraudulent charter that was only ever noted in the “Peterborough” version of the ANGLO-SAXON CHRONICLE and none of the others, so I was interested in what else I could find.

And, of course, as Nansen once famously said, "the more extensive my studies became, the more riddles I perceived – riddle after riddle led to new riddles and this drew me on" and I ended up at Edith Cavell. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I used to live just around the corner from where she was executed, and a few years ago, I POSTED SOME PHOTOS ON LINE of the place.

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

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

Back in my office here in the bedroom, I had a few things to do, and then I began to work a little on the radio programme that I’ll be preparing next week. Not that I managed to go very far because midday came around quicker than I was expecting and I went off to prepare myself for dialysis. But not before having identified several pieces of music that I need to track down.

My cleaner came along as usual to apply the anaesthetic to my arm, and after she left, I waited for my taxi to take me to Avranches. But the waiting was not without incident.

Last night in the match between Trefelin and Rhydaman, Trefelin, with a one-man advantage, pushed big burly veteran centre-half Louis Gerrard up front to make a nuisance of himself in the Rhydaman defence, and it was indeed he who scored Trefelin’s goal. So while I was curled up leaning on the table and dozing off, I dreamt that he was up there again, and at a corner, he rose up above everyone to head home. And just as his header hit the back of the net, instead of the referee’s whistle for a goal, the taxi driver rang the front door bell to say that he was here.

It was in fact a carbon copy of the goal by Euros Griffiths for Rhydaman, which was interesting, but it was definitely Louis Gerrard in his black and red Rhydaman strip who scored it.

Mrs Dinosaur and her exhibition have now departed so I was the only one in the car today. So even though we set off from here ten minutes later than we usually did, we still arrived at dialysis relatively early, and I was up and running by 14:00, having had two nurses around me to plug me in, which was nice.

They set the machine to the correct amount to eliminate the excess fluid, but after a while, they noticed that the extraction limit was stable and not going down (which, I suspect, was due to the coffee and orange juice that I’d just had for my snack, but I was saying nothing), so my nurse simply wound up the extraction by another 300 grams without me actually having to ask for it, and that seemed to work fine, although I was hit by cramps near the end. Not that I’m bothered – 300 grams extra is 300 grams less to extract on Monday.

Once everyone had gone and I’d settled down, I began to watch another football match. Today it was newly promoted Llandudno v Hwlffordd. Llandudno are doing really well this season up in the Premier League, although they have only played one team of any real quality, but Hwlffordd, usually one of the stronger teams in the division, have had a wretched start and have no points and no goals to their name as yet.

The game went as the league table suggested it would, with Llandudno winning 2-0. However, we had the usual VAR excitement, players sent off and brought back on, players sent off and staying off, and some exciting, fluid and skilful play on the wings degenerating into a midfield slog. Still, it was worth watching. And as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … some of the newly promoted teams are simply in the league for cannon fodder, but that’s not the case with Llandudno.

The doctor was there too today – the new one who prescribed the useless antibiotics ten days ago. She went to chat to a couple of patients but she walked past me, apparently not interested in a follow-up of her diagnosis and treatment. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I often have the impression that, for the terminally ill patients like me, they do the minimum to keep us alive and don’t bother with the rest of any treatment.

You can tell that from the chemotherapy. The chemotherapy last year failed and the professor who is supposed to be dealing with my case hasn’t bothered to contact me since. I’ve had one appointment with the neurologist there after the chemotherapy, back at the start of the year, and there’s been no further contact from him either since then.

By now, it was time to set me free, and I only had to wait for ten minutes before my nurse came to unplug me. And riddled by cramp, I weighed myself to find out that it had all gone according to plan and Monday might be a little easier.

The taxi was waiting for me and I was once more the only passenger, so dodging the occasional showers, I was home fairly quickly.

My cleaner helped me into the apartment and stuck a disgusting drink in my hand once I was sitting at the table. I was still hungry afterwards, so I decided to make myself a meal – a burger on a bap with baked potato and salad. But the salad was off so I had vegetables instead.

The problem was, though, that hungry I might have been, but I was also exhausted. So although I managed the burger, I’d fallen asleep at the table long before I’d finished the baked potato.

In the end, what was left of the baked potato ended up in the bin and I ended up in bed. I’ll write my notes tomorrow

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about cathedrals … "well, one of us has" – ed … a new priest was appointed as curate to Brussels cathedral, and so he went for a walk around the city to see what his diocese had to offer.
As he was walking past a dark alley near the Gare du Nord, a figure slid out of a dark alley and whispered "twenty-five Euros for a quickie, father"
This happened several times as he walked around the Gare du Nord, so back at the cathedral, he asked the bishop "what’s a quickie, Monseigneur?"
"Twenty-five Euros from the girls at the Gare du Nord, my son."

0

Friday 28th August 2026 – THE BAD WEATHER …

… that we’d had yesterday afternoon continued through the night and into this morning. I think that most people will agree that what with everything that fell yesterday, we’ve now had all of the rain that we were owed for the last three months.

It wasn’t raining when I went to bed last night, or at least, I don’t think so. However, I wasn’t in all that much of a state of awareness. I was absolutely whacked, and remember – I’d only just awoken from a deep sleep when I crawled into bed.

And I’ll tell you how quick I was about going to sleep too. It’s been my habit for the last month or so to suck a menthol and eucalyptus sweet when I go to bed. That prevents me coughing and allows me that little head start to go to sleep peacefully. Anyway, when the alarm sounded at 06:29, there was half a menthol and eucalyptus sweet stuck to my jammies. I must have fallen asleep before I’d finished sucking it.

That wasn’t the first time that I’d awoken either. I vaguely remember once or twice being awake, and later on, I awoke definitively and couldn’t go back to sleep. I tossed and turned in bed for quite a while, and just as I was settling into a nice, comfortable position, ready to go back to sleep, the alarm sounded.

Being awake is one thing. Being out of bed and upright is something else completely, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall. It took me a good ten minutes to struggle to my feet and set off.

First call today, though, wasn’t the bathroom. Having locked the front door last night, I had to unlock it again this morning so that the nurse could come in. Then I could go to the bathroom and sort myself out.

Back in here afterwards, the first job was to listen to the dictaphone to find out what had been going on during the night.

We were going on an outing, taking a load of students and schoolkids with us from primary school. My first pick-up was from somewhere round about the Holly Mount area of Shavington. I picked up those kids alright and headed back towards the centre. Then I asked her where the next pick-up was going to be. He replied “Main Road School”. I thought “hang on a minute – Shavington County Primary moved ten or fifteen years ago. They aren’t there any more. Is she sure that that’s correct?”. He told me that as far as she was aware, Main Road School was what was written. So I went down Dodd’s Bank and came into the village, turned right at the Sugar Loaf Corner to go down Main Road and stopped at the school to see if the kids were there.

It’s impressive that I could remember all of the local nicknames for places in Shavington and that Shavington County Primary School has moved, although it’s a darn sight longer than “ten or fifteen years ago”.

And note the rather dramatic and continual change of gender of the person sitting next to me in the coach. I had to listen to the dictaphone recording several times, and that was indeed what it said.

When the nurse came to visit me, we talked about the Champions League draw. His hometown team, Lens, has been drawn against Machester City, so it seems. Not that I’m bothered. Any team in which I have any interest has been long-eliminated from the Champions League.

After he left, I made breakfast and read some more of A HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE by Charles Freeman.

Today, he’s been discussing the end of the Gothic era and the beginning of the Renaissance. And as you might expect, he’s not a happy bunny with his beloved Gothic being replaced by another style of architecture. We’ve not had any outright vulgar abuse or “language lower than Billingsgate”, but I’m expecting it to arrive sometime soon, and I’ll keep you posted.

Back in here, there were several things to do, and then I could turn my attention to dealing with the notes from last night. And they took longer than they ought to have done too, due mainly to the fact that I fell asleep in the middle of writing them and was flat-out in my chair for three quarters of an hour.

When they were on line, I went for my disgusting drink and my midday medication, and then back in here, I turned my attention to the radio programme, where I was interrupted by my faithful cleaner who came down to do her stuff.

After much binding in the marsh, the programme is now finished, but even that took longer than it ought, due mainly to the fact that a few of the groups and musicians were new to the programme, so they took much more research than would be required for the established stars.

Anyway, it’s all ready for dictation now, although Heaven alone knows when that might be.

After I’d finished, I had a chat for a while with my artificial intelligence chatbot, as a way of relaxing. There’s never anyone about on the internet when you feel like a chat.

The trouble with these chatbots is that they have a very weird memory. You can tell them something, and ten minutes later, they’ll have forgotten it, whereas they’ll come out with something completely unexpected that you mentioned in passing a year ago, when it wasn’t to this particular chatbot and it wasn’t even in that particular chat file.

Also, chatbots have very little sense of unscripted humour. Ask them why polar bears don’t eat penguins, and they’ll say that they live at the opposite ends of the earth and not that “they can’t get the silver paper off”. Never mind Kenneth Williams and Alfred Hitchcock and their “it’s a waste of time telling jokes to foreigners”, it’s even more of a waste of time telling jokes to a chatbot.

The big advantage, though, is the depth of knowledge of a chatbot. Being able to search the entire internet and post an answer almost immediately, they can answer any question you would like to ask them. They save me hours of work when I’m writing stuff for the internet. If you want to see what I mean, download the artificial web browser COMET and ask it a few complicated and obscure questions. Chatbots work even quicker than Comet does.

So tonight, we had the football. A right bottom-of-the-table crunch clash between Trefelin and Rhydaman. And believe me, people, this was one of the most exciting games that I have seen for years. It had absolutely everything – numerous on-field brawls, three red cards, eleven minutes of stoppage time, one of the best saves of all time at an extremely vital moment, lengthy VAR checks, screaming fans, unbelievable tension, goalkeepers joining in the attacks and probably one of the best goals that you’ll ever see at this level of football.

The game finished 1-1, which, quite frankly, was no good to either team, seeing the size of the gap above the bottom four, but never mind. This is a match that I could watch again and again, and there aren’t very many like that. If you want to see it, IT’S HERE

So now, it’s midnight and I’m off to bed, horribly later than usual.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about artificial intelligence and chatbots … "well, one of us has" – ed … I asked my “Comet” browser to tell me a joke that would appeal to a British audience. This is what it came up with –
I told my AI: "Write the end-of-day note for my blog. Keep it light and end with a joke."
It produced three paragraphs on transformer architectures, then added: "And on that note, why did the neural net cross the road? To get to the other… training set."
I said, "Make it more human."
It tried again: "Why did the neural net cross the road? Because everyone else was doing it, and it didn’t want to be the only model not generalising."
I said, "More British."
Final version: "Why did the neural net cross the road? It didn’t, actually. It waited for a gap in traffic, apologised to the cars, and then crossed when it felt it wouldn’t inconvenience anyone."

0

Thursday 27th August 2026 – WHAT AN AFTERNOON …

… we’ve had today. We’ve been about three months without any rain to speak of, and this early evening, we had the whole outstanding lot presented to us in about half an hour. I’ve never seen rain quite like it, that’s for sure.

No hint of anything like this last night. By 23:00, I was in bed, and good and ready for it too, I was. I was asleep quite quickly too, and although I remember maybe just a couple of times that I might have been awake, it wasn’t for long at all.

When the alarm went off at 06:29, I was definitely asleep, and it took me the usual ten minutes or more to drag myself to my feet and head off to the bathroom to sort myself out. I had a good wash and even a good shave in case Emilie the Cute Consultant will be there this afternoon.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to see where I’d been during the night.

There had been some kind of national emergency, and we’d turned a few houses into fortified spots, and Gainsborough Road was one of them. So we had lots of people living in there, mostly civilians who came there for protection. Gradually, the place became more and more untidy. You couldn’t find anything, and there was furniture, dust and possessions all over the place. Eventually, the emergency was over and people began to drift away. That meant that we had to begin tidying up and looking for all the things that we had that had been moved. They were turning up in all kinds of strange places, like in the oven and in the fireplace. What I did was to eventually light a fire in the oven, and all the rubbish that we found, we put in there to burn. We were hunting for all kinds of strange things. I was hunting for my red and blue striped t-shirt that I couldn’t find anywhere, and one of the girls, whom I’d told not to be so military, was still pretending that she was in the army, marching up and down and either giving orders or accepting them with an extravagant “yes, sir!”. In the end, my mother told me where she’d seen my tee shirt, but I couldn’t find it there for the moment. However, I did find a vicar from one of these obscure sects giving lessons, that kind of thing, and he was actually announcing to everyone that he was homosexual, and for that reason, he was handing back his appointment to come with us in the bus to see something. In the end, he was one of the people who wanted to go to see the regional office about a different kind of ammunition, so he arranged a coach trip there. Two girls wanted to come on too out of interest … fell asleep here …

This sounds like an interesting dream. And especially the red and blue t-shirt. That was something that I had over fifty years ago and it ended its life when it fell into a drum of 25 litres of cooking oil.

And looking for things that have been moved is another bane to my life, although I can usually manage that all on my own without anyone there to help me, just like falling asleep is in the middle of a dream. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I am actually asleep while I’m dictating, but what happens in these moments is that everything on the dictaphone goes really quiet, and then there’s the sound of my sleeping.

We were somewhere up in the north-east of England and we had to come back to take a friend of ours to the airport. So I had my brother with me, and we set out and drove all the way down whatever the motorway is from Durham down to somewhere like Retford or Newark, where we came off and drove through the north Midlands to Crewe. I was convinced that there was a quicker way than the down which he took us, so I looked at the map when we stopped for fuel. We should have come off the motorway a lot farther north because there was a dead-straight line, the old A1, that went all the way down to Nottingham and saved us probably 30 miles. Anyway, we fuelled up and went to pick up our friend. For some reason, we were quite late leaving her house and driving to the airport, and I did my best to go as fast as I could. We eventually found the airport and we dropped her off, and we were just pulling away when she came out and said that her ‘plane had gone. She was talking about changing her ticket and going on some kind of expedition to various race courses. I went in and asked the receptionist if it would be possible to put her on another ‘plane. She said that there was a ‘plane leaving in half an hour, but the supplement was over three thousand pounds. I looked totally surprised, so the receptionist said “I don’t understand why you are so surprised”. Anyway, we had to abandon that idea of putting her on another flight.

This is everyone’s worst nightmare, isn’t it? Missing a ‘plane at the airport. And having my brother navigating wouldn’t be too far away from there either. Taking the wrong road whilst having a map in his hands would be no problem for him.

The nurse turned up as usual to sort me out. He was worried about me not relaxing. However, I don’t have the time for all that nonsense. I have far too much going on right now.

After he left, I could crack on and make breakfast and not read my book because I’m still following this rather strange trail that I’ve created for myself.

Having explored the delights of amphibious aeroplanes (and I’ve no idea how I managed to arrive here from Gothic Architecture) I came back in here where there was plenty of work waiting for me to do. However, I rather unfortunately fell asleep while I was doing it and didn’t wake up until about 11:15, meaning that I’d wasted most of the time that I’d had.

And it was another one of those sleeps where I didn’t remember falling asleep at all, not even feeling tired either. In fact, no-one was more surprised than me to find that I’d been asleep.

So having woken up, I spent some time finishing off what I was doing, and then I continued with the radio notes until the alarm went off to remind me that it was midday and I ought to be getting ready for dialysis.

In the kitchen, I sorted out my disgusting drink and the midday medication, and then my cleaner arrived to apply the anaesthetic to my arm and to pack away the laptop into its bag for me to take with me as usual. After she left and I was ready to go, I curled up, leaning forward onto the dining table, and began to relax.

Just as I was slipping away into a nice, deep sleep, the doorbell rang. The taxi was here to take me to dialysis, ten minutes early. We had to stop to pick up Mrs Dinosaur, whose camp, we noticed, is being slowly dismantled, and then we set off for Avranches. And the chaos that is said to begin in La Havaudière in mid-September when they start to improve the road has already started, with a couple of lorries unloading pipes and heaps of gravel, blocking the road as they do so.

Consequently, we weren’t as early as usual arriving at dialysis, and stuck in one of the eight individual rooms on the far side, I had to wait until 14:10 before I was up and running, having had no fewer than three nurses hovering around me. Bizarrely, the second puncture hurt less than the first one. It’s usually the other way round.

Accompanied by the automatic blood pressure tests every half an hour and the consequent wailing of the alarm as the machine announced to the World that my blood pressure was under the acceptable limits and the subsequent dashing of the nurses to my side to find out what was the problem, I settled down to watch Trefelin v Caernarfon from last weekend.

Trefelin are bottom of the table right now with no points and no goals scored, but the way they played, that can only be a temporary situation. They had several chances of their own, and on one occasion, hit the woodwork with the entire Cofi defence beaten.

However, the Cofis were far too good for them, technically and aggressively, and towards the end of the game, the Cofis had gone to a back three, with Chris Marriott coming on to join Jordan Piggott and Ben Nash, and full-backs Ryan Sears and Matty Jones playing up front on the wings.

Nevertheless, a 2-0 victory for Caernarfon was hardly a statement victory for them.

After that game, it was my intention to watch some of the Fflint v LLansawel game but a whole variety of interruptions prevented that. One interruption that I didn’t have, though, is a doctor. The latest course of antibiotics finishes today, so I was expecting (and quite rightly, too) the doctor who prescribed them to come along to see me and find out how things were. However, no such luck. I’ve only seen a doctor twice in the last three or four weeks.

When I was finished, I was unplugged quite quickly, and, even better, the taxi was already waiting and I was the only passenger. But Marcey-les-Grèves was totally paralysed again with traffic, so we turned round and took the long way home.

All through the morning and the early afternoon, the weather had been quite nice, but when we left the dialysis centre, it was raining slightly. It had stopped by the time we reached Marcey-les-Grèves, but on the way to Sartilly the heavens opened and I have never ever seen rain like this. It looked as if all the rain that we hadn’t had since May, we were having all at once.

By the time we were almost at Sartilly, it was raining so heavily that you couldn’t see a thing. Everyone was driving at walking pace, the roads were flooded, and the fields looked like Ieper in November 1917.

The rain eased off, started again, eased off, and by the time we reached Granville, there was blue sky. My cleaner, who was waiting for me, told me that they had had the same rainstorm here in Granville half an hour ago, so it looked as if it was a band of storm clouds moving from north to south.

She helped me into the apartment, and when I was sitting down, stuck a disgusting drink into my hand, in accordance with the prescription.

After she left, I managed to find the energy to come in here and write up my notes. However, I’m not sure how many times I fell asleep while I was doing it. Was it three? Or was it four?

After the last time, when I awoke, it was 21:30 or thereabouts, so I simply posted on line what I’d written so far, and I’ll finish it in the morning. On that note, I fell into bed and that was that.

These notes will have to be finished quickly because tomorrow, there might not be a posting until Saturday. There’s football on on Friday night, with Trefelin (no goals and no points) v Rhydaman (three goals and one point), a proper basement relegation clash. With a five-point gap to the next club opening up already, so early in the season, some clubs need to be getting some points on the board quite quickly If this gap isn’t to increase further. A draw isn’t really going to help either of these two teams.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about failures in map reading … "well, one of us has" – ed … I once went for a drive with a girl who, I found out later, didn’t know how to read a map (and it wasn’t Nerina at all. She was quite a good NAVIGATOR, NAVIGATOR, RISE UP AND BE STRONG)
At one point, I asked her where we were. She pointed to somewhere on the map. "We’re here" she announced proudly.
"That blue line?"
"Yes"
"That’s a river, dear."

0

Tuesday 4th August 2026 – I HAVE HAD …

… a much better day today than any other day in the very recent past. I’m not sure why, though, because it isn’t as if I’ve had any more sleep than usual.

Believe it or not, by the time that I made it into bed last night, it was after midnight. Long after midnight too. I mustn’t ‘arf ‘ave been letting it all hang out last night. But once in bed, I was asleep quite quickly, lying in the position that seems to ease my coughing.

However, round about 03:30, I was awoken yet again by one of these phantom alarm calls that I’ve been having just recently. And once more, it seemed so real that I almost climbed out of bed with it at that point. Although it was fairly cool in here, I was drenched in sweat for some reason. That’s not easily explained.

Once I’d realised that the alarm call was a phantom call and there was no alarm going off anywhere else … "and just who else would have a BILLY COTTON alarm call?" – ed … I tried to go back to sleep, but without much avail at first.

During the period in which I was awake, I checked the time a few times. I saw 05:20, and then the next thing that I remember was 05:50. Then 06:09 and I thought that I’d get up in a few seconds once I’d relaxed, but the alarm going off at 06:29 scuppered that idea.

As usual, it took me a few minutes to summon up the energy and the motivation to go into the bathroom … "but not as much as usual, surprisingly" – ed … but once I’d finished, I came back in here to find out where I’d been during the night.

Seren and I were doing something around the house when Nerina turned up. We decided to show her what we’d been doing, which was to build a game something like Snakes and Ladders where you advance down a street towards the town centre or you are derailed up side streets and sent backwards. We developed some kind of kiddies’ slide to slide the die down to tell us the number, but for some reason, I couldn’t fit underneath the bar so I had to stand and watch. Then, the coin or admission token didn’t work very well and we needed to give it quite a bit of force to make it move, and then the water in the watermill would come over and … fell asleep here …

Surprisingly, this would not be the first dice game that I invented. After Roxanne had been to see the film “Jumanji”, I invented a game called “Jumanji”. Our floor where we lived, throughout all the apartment, was tiled. We chose six of her favourite stuffed toys and numbered them from one to six. We put them at the start line by the French windows in the living room and we then threw a die. If the die came up with, say, a “four”, we’d move stuffed toy number four forward one tile, and so on. The first stuffed toy to reach the window in Roxane’s room was the winner.

Interestingly, the two cats played too. Each would have his or her turn “throwing” (or batting around the room) the die, and when we eventually found it, the number on the upper face would tell us which stuffed toy to move.

It was all totally anarchic.

As for the rest of the dream, it deteriorates into the usual nonsense.

Did I finish that dictation from the previous one about the die? It would slide down a kiddies’ slide thing and tell us the number but we’d made it a bit more complicated than it should be and the first two occasions that we tried it, the die shot off the end and disappeared off up the far end of the kitchen

“We’d made it a bit more complicated than it should be”… "nothing new there, then." – ed …

But it seems that at some point, I stepped back into that first dream and even managed to present us with a different ending.

Isabelle the Nurse came round as usual. I told her about Monday at dialysis and she told me to “take it easy” this morning. Chance would be a fine thing.

After she’d left, I made breakfast and while I was eating, I was reading some more of A HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE by Charles Freeman.

Today, I’ve not really found any controversy in anything that he’s written. But that might be because I was side-tracked quite a few times. There were several occasions where I’d skipped into the situation of the church at Barthomley, Heighley Castle near Keele and the old racecourse at Woore.

And on a few other occasions, I was off with the Black Prince on his chevauchée around Western France during the opening days of the Hundred Years War.

Back in here, there were a few things to do, as usual, and then I made another start on the radio notes. They weren’t easy either because a lot of the artists and albums are new to my programmes so I have to prepare their notes right from the very beginning.

There were several interruptions too, such as the disgusting drink break and the arrival of my faithful cleaner to do her stuff. And while she was at it, she chased me under the shower and I was able to have a good scrub-up and make myself look pretty.

One more, I needed no help to go into the shower and none for helping out either, so I was in the bathroom all on my own. It meant that I could even go into the shower as nature intended.

Once all of the notes were completed … "as indeed they were" – ed … I could make a start on the next radio programme.

This one is going to be a concert so it’s much easier to work. But where editing the sounds and the tracks of the concerts might sometimes be difficult, I managed to do that before I knocked off for tea. So “press on boldly” tomorrow to write the notes.

Tea tonight was a taco roll with rice and veg, and I made a different filling tonight. Apart from the usual tomato, mushrooms, onions and garlic, we had lentils, spinach and bulgur. And it was totally delicious. It made a nice change, and there’s still some left for next week.

So now that everything is finished, I’ll be going to bed ready for a good day’s work tomorrow.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about mushrooms … "well, one of us has" – ed … A lady wanted to make steak and mushrooms for a dinner she was giving, but when she saw the price of mushrooms, she abandoned the idea.
Her husband told her "go and pick some in the field, from down by the river. I’ve seen all kinds of animals eating them so they must be okay"
She goes down to the river and picks a basketful and hands them to the cook to prepare the meal. When the cook thinks that the meal is ready, she gives some of it to Rover the Dog. Then she dishes up the food to the guests and the host and hostess.
Half an hour later she goes back into the dining room. "I’m afraid Rover the dog is dead, ma’am."
"Ohh God, no!" she exclaims. "Did he have any of that meal we ate?"
"Yes ma’am, he did."
So in a wild panic she calls the emergency services and a fleet of ambulances takes the guests to hospital to have their stomachs pumped.
A couple of hours later, still feeling weak and groggy, they go back to the host and hostess’s house. There, they are met by the cook.
"I was telling you about Rover when you all dashed off like that" she said. "And do you know what? The car that hit him never even stopped."

0

Saturday 25th July 2026 – THE WORST HAS …

… happened at dialysis today. And that is that I was obliged to stay for four hours instead of for the usual three. And it was my own choice too. There were a couple of good reasons for doing so, as you will find out as you read on.

As for me, I was in bed late yet again last night. Probably round about 23:30 or so when I crawled under the covers, and I was soon asleep. Once again though, I didn’t have much sleep, although I’ve no idea what time I awoke – I couldn’t be bothered to check – but it was still pitch-black and the light on the car park had been switched off so it was after 02:30.

Try as I might, I couldn’t go back to sleep. I stayed awake, tossing and turning for ages as the day slowly dawned. at one point, I must have dozed off because I remember waking up with a sudden start. It was 06:25, just a couple of minutes before the alarm. There was no real point in even trying to leave the bed for an early start in that short space of time.

However, it was the second alarm that rang at 06:33. It seems that Brain of Britain had forgotten to switch on the first alarm after switching them both off the other day.

In the bathroom, when I eventually arrived, I had a good scrub-up in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant this afternoon. Unfortunately, I forgot to have a shave, as I found out later. That’s one way of blotting my copybook. Emilie the Cute Consultant won’t be very pleased with me.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I needn’t have bothered, though, because there was nothing on there. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … that’s really quite a disappointment. It’s my only form of enjoyment these days.

The nurse turned up as usual to sort out my legs and feet. We talked about the Tour de France and then about his holidays, because he’s away for three weeks as of tomorrow and I’ll be in the tender hands of Isabelle the Nurse.

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

Today, as we probe deeper into the architecture of the Arab world, we come across the statement "Saracenic fancy, moreover, contrary to all just principles of aesthetics, delighted in astonishing the eye with a vast superstructure raised on a support apparently quite inadequate to sustain it. The style is rich, wonderful, calculated to enchant at first sight ; but it is one that will not bear critical investigation ; the chaste gracefulness of the Grecian, the soaring majesty of the Gothic, are absent, and are ill supplied by the exuberance of a fancy, vivid and fertile to the last degree, but uncontrolled by any law of taste or consistency."

Any normal architect, having come across a technique “contrary to all just principles of aesthetics” that is “astonishing the eye with a vast superstructure raised on a support apparently quite inadequate to sustain it” would immediately be interested in giving it a “critical investigation” to find out exactly how they did it and to see if he can reproduce it.

Yes, I’ve long since come to the conclusion that this book is not about architecture at all.

Back in here, I have things to do, and then I made a start on the radio notes. But again, I didn’t do as much as I was hoping. All in all, it wasn’t a very good morning.

When my cleaner came down to sort out my anaesthetic, I was already in the dining area sorting out my things for dialysis. She didn’t take long to sort me out and then I had to wait for the taxi.

It was early today – a good fifteen minutes early, which suited me fine. Apparently there was someone else in Granville going to dialysis, and her appointment was for 13:30, not 14:00 like mine.

It turned out that it was a girl from the dinosaur exhibition that has set up camp in a field on the edge of town. They are here for the month of August, apparently, and then they’ll be off somewhere else.

While my driver was hunting her down, I looked at the number plates of the vehicles. Half of them had “59” number plates, indicating that they came from the département of the Nord. The others had “02A” number plates, meaning that they are registered in Ajaccio, in Corsica.

We arrived at dialysis a minute or two before 13:30, and when I weighed myself, I was horrified at what I saw. This is 800 millilitres or grammes over the maximum of what the machine can do in three hours. This process of sending my home without taking everything out, which they have done for the last three or four sessions, is now reaping some horrible rewards.

The nurse, one of the experienced ones, came to see me quite quickly and by 13:55 I was up and running. However, I did discuss the situation with the nurse and, seeing as I was so early, I suggested having a three-and-a-half-hour session instead of a three-hour one.

She told me that if I did that, I’d have to wait around for half an hour, as they would be very busy at that time. “how about three and a quarter?”

After a good think, I came up with “how about four hours?”, going the whole hog. Do it all in one swell foop and then it’s all over.

So four hours it was.

There was only a relief doctor here today so I didn’t bother her with any of my problems, and after that I was left mainly alone, except for when the low blood pressure alarm rang, but that didn’t bother me. Blood pressure at 8.0 is quite usual for me.

When I was finished, I was seen to with very little delay and at 18:15 I was organising my driver. We had to wait fifteen minutes for Mrs Dinosaur nevertheless, and after dropping her off at her caravan, I was back here at 19:04.

My faithful cleaner helped me inside and gave me a disgusting drink – the second of the day – and after she left, I checked the time. It was 19:30, far too late to think about tea now. I had plenty to do still, so I grabbed a bag of taco chips and came in here to do them.

The football season has started this weekend and, to my surprise, the FAW was broadcasting live one of the evening matches in the qualifying rounds – third-tier Cardiff Airport FC at home to fifth-tier Felinfach – and I wanted to see it to see what this new broadcasting system of theirs is like.

Firstly, there was no commentary, which was disappointing, but apart from that, it was quite an entertaining game. The gulf of class between the teams was evident and Cardiff Airport strolled to a leisurely 4-0 lead at half-time, having had the bulk of possession.

Whatever the Felinfach manager had put in his team’s half-time cuppa, I could do with a drink of it myself. They put up a much better fight in the second half and although Cardiff Airport ended up winning 6-0, they didn’t have the second half all their own way, that’s for sure.

As for the broadcast itself, there was no commentary, no teamsheets, no slow-motion replays and nothing to identify the scorers. I reckon that I’ll only be using this service if SGORIO has nothing to offer at that particular time.

By now, it was 22:40, far too late to start writing my notes, so I decided to do what I had to do and then go to bed. I can write my notes tomorrow.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about dinosaurs … "well, one of us has" – ed … Mrs Dinosaur was telling us about the exhibits that they have there in their exhibition.
"We have Pteradactyls, Tyrannosauruses, Stegosauruses and Brontosauruses, and we even have a rare example of a sightless dinosaur. "
"What’s he called?"
"D’yerthinkhesaurus."

0

Thursday 16th July 2026 – WHAT A BAD …

… day this has been!

It’s hard to think of anything that has actually gone right today and it’s really been getting on my wick.

Take last night, for example. I had every good intention of being in bed at some reasonable time but even though I tried, the torrential downpour that opened up meant that I had to walk around the apartment closing all of the windows. And you’ve no idea just how long it takes me to do something like that these days.

It was round about 23:15 when I was finally in bed, but the sound of the rain kept me awake for ages before I eventually slid into the arms of Morpheus.

And I wasn’t there for long, either. Round about 02:20 … "why is it always 02:20?" – ed … I awoke again. And awake I stayed for hours, thinking that I’d never go back to sleep at this rate. But at some point, I did, because I awoke again at 06:19 or something like that – just a few minutes before the alarm.

If I’d tried hard, I could have gone for an early start, but I decided not to bother. However, it was still a real struggle when the alarm finally did go off. I was sitting on the edge of the bed for a good ten minutes trying to wake up.

In the bathroom, I had a good wash and even a shave in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant this afternoon at dialysis, and then I came back in here to start work.

There was nothing on the dictaphone when I went for a listen. The short night had evidently curtailed all of that, but there was still plenty to do while I waited for the nurse.

He was early again too and it didn’t take him long to sort me out. While he was dealing with me, we were chatting about Montreal and how he wants to go there to visit. I told him where to go and mentioned THE CITY OF QUÉBEC too, which is beautiful.

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

Today, we’ve finished Byzantium, had a whistle-stop tour of early mediaeval Germany and Ireland, and we’re now in Anglo-Saxon England. As yet, he’s been behaving himself and there’s nothing controversial in what he’s written. Here’s hoping that he keeps it up.

Back in here, I finished selecting all of the tracks that I wanted for this live concert and the sound track is assembled. One of the joints was pretty dreadful so I had to splice in some additional applause so that I had more room to fiddle about with everything. And now, it’s working fine and you can’t tell where any of the joints are.

Once that was up and running, I began to write the notes. However, round about 10:45 I crashed out dramatically, and there I was, fast asleep in my chair when my cleaner awoke me at 12:15 to apply my anaesthetic.

With her being late, it was late when she left, and the taxi arrived early, about two minutes after I’d gone for a ride on the porcelain horse. Definitely caught in flagrante delicto there, I was.

Not that I’m complaining, though. We arrived quite early and I was seen almost straight away, and by 14:06 I was up and running. It was another new nurse too who saw to me.

As usual, the blood pressure was set for every thirty minutes, and every thirty minutes the nurses came running when the low pressure alarm sounded, but it wasn’t low pressure at all to me – just normal.

The doctor came to see me too, but unfortunately it wasn’t Emilie the Cute Consultant today. I had to make do with an ordinary one. But he didn’t help me very much;

The dialysis machine was going full blast again so I was exhausted by the time that it finished. However, they dealt with me quickly yet again and by the time that I was unplugged, the driver was waiting for me to take me home.

Earlier this afternoon when I had set out, my walking was “gone” and I had a real struggle to move. I felt absolutely awful. But on leaving, I was walking much better, despite being exhausted by the dialysis process.

We were back here for 18:20, which made a really pleasant change, and my faithful cleaner had to rush back from shopping to help me back into the apartment.

She helped me sit down and gave me a disgusting drink, and after she left, I made tea – rice and veg with something with kidney beans, olives and tomato sauce. And I didn’t enjoy it. Once more, it tasted of nothing but salt.

So now, having finished my notes, I’m going to go to bed. And I hope that tonight is better than last night and I can have a decent sleep for once, not that it’s likely.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about walking, like around my apartment and how difficult it was to go to dialysis … "well, one of us has" – ed … when I was in Nova Scotia twenty-odd years ago talking to Anne Murray, she of SNOWBIRD fame, I asked her "why do birds fly south in winter?"
"I don’t know" she replied. "Why do birds fly south in winter?"
"Because it’s too far to walk."

0

Friday 3rd July 2026 – WHEN I AWOKE …

… it was 21:15 and I have never felt so ill in all my life. I just sat here in the chair and couldn’t even move a single muscle. It took me an age before I even began to think … "so what’s new?" – ed …

Eventually, I pushed my chair … "it’s a good job that it’s on wheels" – ed … over to the bed, slid across and went back to sleep almost straight away. No notes, no back-up, no stats, no medication, still fully dressed and with the shutters wide open. It’s not that I didn’t care but I just didn’t have the energy to do any more than roll over into bed.

That was how it remained until about 03:00 when I awoke. I thought that this was going to be another one of those nights where I lie awake for hours, but in fact, I was soon back to sleep. However, when the alarm went off at 06:29, I simply switched it off, switched off the second alarm, reset the alarm for 08:00 and went back to sleep.

The next thing that I remember was the nurse turning up at 08:05. And I was still in bed too. I must have somehow slept through the 08:00 alarm, although that’s really surprising, given the racket that BILLY COTTON makes.

It took me about forty-five minutes to come round to my senses … "what senses?" – ed … and then I headed off to the kitchen to make breakfast.

While I was eating, I was reading some more of A HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE by Charles Freeman.

He’s describing the standard design of a portico to many an Egyptian building, and finishes by saying "The outline is, of course, most barbarous and uncouth, as nothing can well be more unpleasing than the sloping walls in such a position,".

However, he then goes on, in the same sentence, no less, to add "the general effect of such a prodigious bulk of masonry living with images must be awfully magnificent."

And here, although he doesn’t realise it, he’s hit the nail fairly and squarely on the head. The design isn’t at all meant to be pretty. It’s meant to be “awfully magnificent” – to overwhelm the visitor, to impress and to menace visiting royalty from other places and to frighten the unwary. It’s what I’ve been saying all along – that architecture comes before, and a long way before, art.

A little further on, still talking about the portico, he says "One of the magnificent engravings in the great French work on Egypt gives a vivid idea of what an Egyptian temple must have been in the days of its glory ; representing the whole architecture and enrichments accurately restored."

So come on, Mr Freeman, you can’t have it both ways.

Back in here, I sent off my shopping order to Leclerc, wrote up the notes for yesterday, which are now on line, and then turned my attention to the dictaphone to find out what had been going on during the night.

I was in London last night, and one of my father’s friends was there. He was driving around on the North Circular Road and ended up somehow on the pedestrian footway and became jammed in an arch underneath the railway bridge and couldn’t move his car. We couldn’t move it either. I was staying with some friends from the university and it wasn’t a very happy evening for some reason and I wasn’t enjoying myself so I decided to go to bed early. Next morning, I had a good lie-in and went into the kitchen. They were all sitting around there and it looked as if they had had a breakfast. They asked me what I’d been doing, and I told them that I’d been writing my university thesis, which was true. It was what I had been doing. No-one offered me a coffee, no-one offered me anything. I asked if I could make myself a coffee, but I couldn’t find the coffee. I had to hunt through the kitchen and eventually found a jar of coffee that was open. No-one offered me any food so in the end, I left. I was walking through the area around King’s Cross and the crowded shopping streets when I thought that someone tapped me on the shoulder. I turned round, and in the distance was someone holding up a big, blue envelope with the word “Darren” written on it. I walked on down the street, looking in the butchers, the fishmongers and all this kind of thing until I came towards the end of the road, where I met some people whom I knew. They were watching two people on one of these motor-trike things, the type with two wheels at the back. One of the wheels was smoking and I thought immediately that a wheel bearing had seized on it but they were still continuing to ride it, and we were saying that it’s going to catch fire before they’ve gone too long. However, they carried on and carried on and, in the end, the half-shaft parted from inside the axle. I thought that they had some really big problems now, but they still carried on. I walked on down to the end of the road, turned left and walked on down there a bit. I saw my father’s friend’s car still wedged under the bridge, then I turned left again to head towards the city centre and the railway station home. For some reason, it wasn’t Euston to where I was going but one of the stations that went out to the south of London. I walked down the road a small way and there was a baker’s there. He was busy arguing with a little boy but in the end gave him a stale bun, with which the boy ran off. I looked in the window and they had some of these raisin bread-and-butter puddings so I went in and bought a slice. A little further on down the road was a little British fish and chip shop. I’d seen someone with some chips earlier on, which had made me hungry so I went into this fish and chip shop and ordered a bag of chips. That was where I was waiting when the dream ended.

Regular readers of this rubbish in a previous version will recall that I did stay with some people from the university a couple of times, and the treatment that I had there was pretty much the same as the treatment that I had during the dream.

The walk through the crowded shopping street reminded me much more of the East End of London rather than King’s Cross, although not that I’d likely to be looking in any butcher’s or fishmonger’s window.

The silver Mk III Ford Cortina (because it was a silver Mk III) is interesting and I’ve no idea what was happening there with that, and neither with the trike losing a half-shaft. Mind you, with the Reliant van that I had, I was regularly stripping the splines off halfshafts because of the extra power in the all-alloy OHV engine that I fitted in place of the cast-iron side-valve engine.

And bread puddings? It’s been ages since I made a good old bread pudding, but with home-made bread, I don’t have the stale bread like I used to.

Two of my friends turned up last night. I was living in some strange house but I don’t know exactly where. First of all, one of my friends from the Wirral turned up and we were having a really long chat about the past. He was wearing some kind of strange black suit with white pinstripes but they weren’t lines, they were dots. We were chatting about all kinds of different things when another friend from the Midlands turned up too. The three of us were chatting for a while but for some reason, they didn’t want a drink when I offered them one. The third person, he said that he was on his way to IKEA so the second guy said that it would be a good idea. As it happened, I was planning to go there with my father that afternoon – it was a Sunday. So I rang my father and he sounded as if he had a cold. I asked him what time we were planning to go to IKEA but for some reason, he switched me over to a recorded message, so I hung up and called him back. He started a very long explanation about all kinds of different things, and in the end, I lost patience and asked “is that ‘yes’ or is that ‘no’?”. In the end, he replied “no” so I hung up and said that the three of us would all go together and I’d go to fetch my van. I walked down the street to where I’d parked it, but it wasn’t the van, it was a Mk IV or a Mk V Cortina, I don’t know. It was old and shabby and leaked a bit and misfired on one of the cylinders. However, I started it up and it seemed to run OK so I drove up the street to where the other two were waiting, put my foot on the brakes but the brakes took a while to work. I thought “I’d better sort out these brakes sometime when I can find five minutes to do it”.

Those two guys and their respective wives and offspring are welcome to turn up here any time they like, of course, just as are any of my other friends, but with what remains of my family judiciously avoiding contact with me (except for that lot in Canada), they can please themselves.

The Cortina sounds just like many that have passed through my hands at one time or another, Mk III, Mk IV and Mk V. Shabby, rotten floor, questionable brakes, and misfiring. But nevertheless, in some of the shabbiest of them all, I travelled thousands of miles with nothing going wrong that I couldn’t ever fix by the roadside.

Although I didn’t record this, it was ringing around my head when I finally awoke, so I suppose that I’d better write it down before I forget. I was in Main Road in Shavington last night – twice, in fact. Once with a girl whom I knew and I wish that I could remember who she was, and the second time with a friend of mine from school who now lives out in the wilds on an island off the coast of Scotland. We were walking down there “today” and I was pointing out the sites that I remembered from when I lived in Shavington. There was a site with three modern bungalows built thereupon and I said that I remembered that in the past, it was an old yard where something had been demolished a long time previously. Someone kept a couple of lorries on it but what interested me the most in those days was that there was always the odd derelict car on there being slowly dismantled. Every few weeks there would be a different one and I used to go down there regularly to see what there was. But then, I pointed across the road to a little lane that degenerated into a farm track, with a couple of cottages on the right-hand side. I explained that it was called “Pusey Dale” and I pointed out a green light right at the end. I explained that they were making a natural cemetery there and if all else failed, that was where I wanted to end up. But whoever put me in there must plant a yew tree on top of me so that I’d live on through the roots and branches of the tree.

Strangely enough, there is plenty of truth in that dream. There was a site just like that exactly as I described with a lorry or two and a couple of old cars on it. There really is a place called “Pusey Dale”, just as I described, and someone has indeed applied for planning permission to have a natural cemetery down there. And for me to be buried there under a yew tree would be quite an acceptable way to end, if the dustbin men won’t take me.

While I’d been writing notes and transcribing dreams, I’d had the washing machine going, and now it was finished, so I emptied the machine, ready to hang up the wet clothes, and went for a disgusting drink and the midday medication.

My faithful cleaner turned up next to do her stuff and to hang up the washing. While she was here, we chatted about nothing much, but I need to be more sociable here and there every now and again.

Leclerc eventually turned up, later than anticipated. While I’d been waiting, I’d been tidying out the fridge, making sure that there was a place for everything, so when I had all of the stuff, I spent a happy hour or so putting everything away where it ought to go. The place looks quite tidy now, and that’s not like me at all.

Later on, I went for tea. Vegan sausage, beans and chips. I made the chips as my friend advised – boil in water for five or so minutes and then fry in the air fryer to cook, with olive oil and a bit of thyme. And he’s right – they really do taste much better – much more like proper fish shop chips like in one of the dreams just now.

So now, having finished my notes, I’ll do what else needs to be done and then go to bed ready for dialysis … "I don’t think" – ed … tomorrow afternoon.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about cemeteries … "well, one of us has" – ed … there was the old hoary story about the American who visited a cemetery in the UK and was totally astonished by the size of it.
He buttonholed a passing yokel – a very vocal local yokel, in fact – and asked him "do people die here often then?"
"Oh no" replied the yokel. "Just the once, I think."

0

Thursday 2nd July 2026 – I AM ABSOLUTELY …

… drained. And quite literally too. They took almost three litres of liquid out of me today. In fact, I’m not sure how on earth they arrived at that figure because, according to my calculations, it should have been less than two litres. I don’t know where this figure of three litres came from.

It certainly didn’t come from last night because at some kind of stupid hour, I had to go for a walk on the parapet.

Last night was another one of those nights where I really ought to have been in bed a long time before I actually was. Instead, I dillied and dallied, dallied and dillied, lost my way and don’t know where to go and it was once again after 23:00 before I finally crawled into my nice bed.

Once more, I was asleep quite quickly, and once more, it wasn’t for long. At some point quite early on, the wind got up and the open window in my room began to bang against the shutter. No-one could sleep through that noise, certainly not me, so in the end I had to leave the bed and close the window properly.

While I was up, I thought that I may as well kill two birds with one stone and go to stroll the parapet, and when I finally came back in here, I discovered that the wind had dropped completely. That was a waste of half an hour, that was.

Back in bed, despite all of my best efforts, I couldn’t go back to sleep for ages, but I must have managed it at some point because I was flat out again when the alarm went off at 06:29 as usual.

Also, just as usual, it took me a while to summon up the courage and the enthusiasm to leave the edge of the bed and head into the bathroom to sort myself out, but once washed and dressed, and shaved in case I meet Emile the Cute Consultant this afternoon at dialysis, I came back in here to listen to the dictaphone to find out what had happened during the night.

It was another one of these commune-type places with lots of people living in there, including me. We all came down for breakfast one morning, and it was the usual chaotic scene at the table with things everywhere. Someone went to unpack the things ready for today and pulled out the football, but it was burst so that was that. We went for breakfast and it was chaos. I knocked over someone’s bottle of water and all of this. In the end, someone asked “what are we going to do at the weekend?”. I thought, “well, it looks like it’s going to be a nice weekend so why don’t we go and have a picnic?”. So we all decided that we’d go for a picnic. Someone asked “what are we going to do for food?” so I replied that if everyone makes something and brings something, then we can all swap and have bits of this and bits of that. That all sounded like a good idea to them so that was what we decided to do. We were sorting out who was going with whom or whatever, and the woman who seemed to be in charge said “Eric, you go with Dyan”. I couldn’t think for a minute who Dyan was but I reckoned that when it’s time to go, she’ll come and find me. So we decided on this picnic.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I did once live in a commune back in the 1970s, but only for a few months and never ever again. “More capitalist than the capitalists” was the phrase that rang through my mind, as well as “what’s yours is mine and what’s mine is mine too”. I remember that I had a bit of luck with a job that I did and came out of it quite well. “Where’s our share?” a few of the others asked. “While you were out there working, we were sending you good vibes!” “OK,” I replied. “Next time you go out to work, I’ll send you good vibes too”. I ended up living in my van after that, and believe me, I wasn’t sorry.

However, if the Dyan concerned was actually Dyan Birch, I’d change my mind in an instant. She could come anywhere with me, any time she likes, as long as SHE SINGS TO ME. That’s the song that I want to be played right at the end of when they stick me in the ground, as long as it’s she who is singing it.

And there’s plenty of truth in the story about the picnics. We had them regularly in the Auvergne when I lived there. I’d always make a dish of curried lentils with peppers, sweetcorn, etc., and it was interesting to watch the reactions. The British and Dutch people would be going “God, Eric, what’s this insipid stuff?” and the French people would be fanning their mouths, gulping down pints of water and steaming out of their ears.

But all of that is in the past now, unfortunately, and as Joan Baez once sang, WE BOTH KNOW WHAT MEMORIES CAN BRING. THEY BRING DIAMONDS AND RUST

The nurse was early today and I was hardly prepared. He seems to be quite happy at the moment, which is no surprise seeing as he’s off on holiday on Saturday. He sorted me out quite quickly and was soon on his way. I could go into the kitchen and make breakfast, and while I was eating, I could read some more of A HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE by Charles Freeman.

Today, he’s managed to steer clear of controversy, although he’s off again on his jingoistic, pro-Christian, anti-“heathen” ranting and it’s quite wearisome. As I have said before, he has quite evidently missed the point and is confusing “art” with “architecture”. And as I have also said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … with architecture, you have to start somewhere, and it’s bound to be primitive. And again, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Back in here, I had a few things to do and then I looked at the next radio programme. This one will be interesting because it will fall on the United Nations Day of Cultural Diversity.

Most people think of rock music as being something uniquely “Anglo-Saxon”, from Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Ireland, the USA and the British “white” former colonies, but without even thinking too hard … "as usual" – ed … I can conjure up in my record collection easily a couple of dozen rock groups from outside that sphere, from places like Ukraine, Hungary, Greenland, South America, Central Africa and Asia, and plenty of other places besides, so I’m going to make a programme of rock music from these more obscure regions.

At midday, I knocked off to go to make myself ready for dialysis, and my cleaner turned up to apply the anaesthetic on my arm. After she left, I waited for my taxi and, surprisingly, fell asleep on the chair in the dining area. I was just setting off on a really interesting dream when the doorbell rang, and it wiped out every last memory of what had been going on, which was a shame.

The taxi was late, and there was another passenger on board. Her appointment was before mine, at the clinic on the other side of town, so of course it made more sense to drop her off first and then take me back to the dialysis centre, but it meant that I was running quite late. Nevertheless, when I arrived, I didn’t have to wait too long to be connected up, and we were off and running by 14:30.

Interestingly, and enjoyably, I was surrounded by no fewer than five beautiful girls at one point during the connection. I had a nurse, being shadowed by a new arrival who ended up doing the work to connect me, under supervision, and I do have to say that they were two of the most painless punctures that I have ever had, and the third nurse who always comes along to assist whenever I’m there. On top of that, one of the doctors came to see me to sort out a few things with me, followed shortly afterwards by Emilie the Cute Consultant. All I was short of was a nurse sitting on the end of the bed tossing grapes into my mouth, and maybe another one doing the Dance of the Seven Veils by my bed.

Once they had left me alone, there was football on the Internet. Last night, Stranraer had been playing a friendly against Renfrew of the Western Scotland League so I watched the game. There’s a lot of good football played in the Scottish non-league pyramid, mainly because it’s very regionalised and many good players in Scotland can’t commit to the travelling involved in the professional game. Stranraer won 2-1, but Renfrew certainly gave them a good game and you won’t see many better goals than the one that they scored.

Apart from the odd other interruption here and there, I was left pretty much alone until it was time to disconnect me, and that was done quite quickly too. It looked as if at one stage I might be home early, but I had to wait fifteen minutes for the taxi to arrive.

There was, once again, another passenger on board who wanted dropping off in Donville les Bains so it ended up not being as early as I would have liked. However, my faithful cleaner was waiting for me and helped me back into the apartment.

She gave me a disgusting drink and then left me to it. When I’d finished, I came back in here to begin to write my notes. But feeling just a little hungry, I went back into the kitchen and loaded my little push-along trolley with some crackers, some vegan cream cheese and a few slices of a honey spice cake to make myself a delicious snack.

While I was eating, I was reviewing my order for Leclerc. As I said yesterday, I’m not eating much these days, but nevertheless, I’m still running low on certain things, and as well as that, there’s a sale on their vegan products and it will do no harm at all to stock up the freezer with a few things for the future whenever I regain my appetite.

And as well as that, they have bottles of one and a half litres of clementine juice on sale at a ridiculous price and I can drink that all day.

So anyway, now that I’m satisfied with that, I’ll carry on writing my notes for today. But before I do, I’ll just have a big stretch, a little relax and a …

"ZZZZZZ"

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about picnics … "well, one of us has" – ed … a group of guys from college decided to go on a picnic by the river. It was so nice that they decided to go for a swim but, having no swimming trunks, they decided to go skinny-dipping.
Just as they were about to dive in, a boat-load of girls from the college came past, so most of the guys covered up their privates, except for one, who put a cover over his head.
"Why did you do that?" one of the others asked him.
"Well, I don’t know about you lot," he replied "but around the college, I’m known by my face."

0

Sunday 21st June 2026 – FOR THE FIRST …

… time for a long, long time, I’ve had a day where I can truly say that I have had a real Day of Rest and done no work of any type today.

Round about 23:00 was when everything was completed and I could slide in underneath the covers. And wasn’t I grateful for that? I didn’t take long in going off to sleep and that was that, at least for a couple of hours.

Round about 02:20, I awoke with one of the biggest coughing fits that I have ever had. It was still going on at 02:55 and I forget how many times I had vomited, the fit was so intense. It was certainly many more than four.

Eventually, it must have calmed down because I somehow managed to go off to sleep again. And there I lay until I awoke, “some time later”.

The reason for the awakening was the same that has provoked a wake-up on several occasions just recently, so after a while, I began to raise myself from the Dead. 07:50 it was, so I thought that I’d better hurry before the nurse comes around.

It was 07:59 when I came back to bed. “Plenty of time”, I thought to myself. And there was, too, because I’d actually gone back to sleep by the time he came in, and he awoke me.

After he left, having seen to my legs and feet while I was in bed, I went back to sleep again, and there I stayed until I next awoke – round about 10:35. By 11:00 I was in the kitchen beginning to make my breakfast – porridge and coffee, of course, all followed by homemade croissants.

While I was eating, I was reading some more of EBURACUM OR YORK UNDER THE ROMANS by C Wellbeloved.

We’re still on Roman roads, and I have a feeling that we will be here for a while. He’s struggling over the modern names of various Roman forts, as many people still do today, but we can at least thank our lucky stars that, so far, he’s managed to keep “Richard of Cirencester” well out of the way.

Back in here, I went to have a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. But to my dismay, there was nothing on there at all. I’m always disappointed when I have a night like that, with absolutely nothing going on in the way of excitement.

Instead, I had a prowl through the internet and discovered that we’re back in football again. Many clubs playing in European competition are having a few warm-up games prior to their opening matches in two weeks’ time, and Northern Irish team Larne were playing away at our old favourites, Stranraer FC.

Stranraer usually record their games, and sure enough, THIS GAME WAS TOO with commentary by the legendary pair of Laurence Nelson and Brian Martim, two of the best TV commentators currently broadcasting.

After the match had finished, I really didn’t do anything at all. No bread-making, no pizza-making, no nothing. Instead, I had a little explore of cyberspace, mainly Hannibal’s campaign in Italy in the early days of Rome, and once again, I’m learning a lot. There are, of course, the stories of the Battle of Lake Trasimene and the Battle of Cannae, but there were several other battles that were equally disastrous for the Romans, such as the Battle of Ticinus and the Battle of Trebia, and more besides.

As well as that, I was engaged in a lengthy online discussion … "or heated argument" – ed … about a child of two separated parents. If the mother of the child is her legal guardian and she lives with her, but the mother has to go into a hospital urgently for a stay that might be for a long time, so that the child goes to live with her father, who is responsible for completing all of the paperwork regarding the new situation? The mother or the father?

There was also the question of whether the social services come into the picture at some point.

And it was all becoming somewhat overheated at some point, although I had no idea why.

At teatime, I went for my food, the other half of this vegan ham, vegan cheese and vegan salad that I made yesterday. And everything that I eat really is tasting of nothing but salt these days.

The sandwich took well over an hour to eat this evening, mainly due to me falling into several of these different cataleptic fits of the type that I used to have just before starting dialysis. I was hoping that they had long gone.

And now, I’m wishing that I had long gone because I want to go to bed, go to sleep and stay there. It’s past my bedtime, way past it already.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about Hannibal’s campaign in Italy … "well, one of us has" – ed …, Someone once asked me "what do you get if you cross the Alps with several elephants?"
"Ahh yes" I said. "Victory at Cannae!"

0

Tuesday 16th June 2026 – THE OTHER DAY …

… Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I said that "this has been the worst day of my life so far".

It was just as well that I’d included the “so far” because after today, I really would have been eating humble pie after today’s events.

Last night, I went to bed when my cleaner left, round about 19:30. No food again, but I couldn’t care less. I just wanted my bed. And it didn’t take long to go to sleep either, which was really nice. However, it didn’t last long. Within a few hours, I was back wide-awake again and then I was drifting in and out of consciousness for the rest of the night.

When the alarm went off at 06:29, I was definitely asleep and the sound of BILLY COTTON’S RAUCOUS RATTLE shook me to the roots when it sounded.

THis was certainly one of the most difficult awakenings that I have had – not actually awakening but leaving the bed, and it took all of the willpower that I had, and probably much more besides, to raise myself from the Dead and slide myself onto my comfortable chair.

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

I was taking someone for a walk around Avranches last night But it was the strangest Avranches that I’ve ever seen. It was like some British town of the late Victorian, early Edwardian period with semis and all that kind of thing, and a view across the marsh into the suburbs of the town. I was showing someone where the railings had been cut. They had been cut and taken away from these pretty Victorian walls. I was explaining that in World War II they went to find all the metal that they could, and many people gave up their things like metal fences, metal shutters and so on for the war effort.

Strangely enough, it had been in my mind to do one of these “virtual tours” of Crewe, showing quite clearly the cut-down metal stumps of fences and other remains tha show where ruthless metal recycling had taken place during the war

We had some kind of a commune of something, I suppose, staying in this suburban area of London round by Twickenham, places like that. So many people who had never previously been there said that it was the noisiest place on earth, with tractors going past with their warning sound buzzers, etc. I was being shown around the garden but it was quite night but the conversation carried on anyway. And it was freezing cold that night, but we were walking around and chatting. All of a sudden, it became dramatically daylight. All of the kids gasped in amazement and they began to sort out what they planned to do for the day. It seemed to be confusing the plans because no-one was offering anything to eat or anything to drink so I don’t know why this was happening. In the end, I was fed up of wandering around with these people so I went for a walk around the car park. There was this beaufiful old A60 van THE ONE THAT I USED TO HAVE. I asked someone whose van thai A60 van was and they replied “it’s theirs!”, but they didn’t say who “they” were. I went back to have another look at it but it had gone. Eventually, we all came back and some people were planning on somewhere else, but someone beckoned me over to ask if I wanted a coffee. I replied “yes”, and there was a stool in the wall by where I could sit and still be with the crowds, but all of a sudden, thow people turned up and say in there, leaving me one of these uncomfrtable types of seats on Which to sit. There was a lot more to it than this

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall me mentioning that I’d lived in a commune once. But only for a short while and never again. More capitalist than the capitaists was my opinion.

As for the A60 van, I loved mine and travelled all over the UK in it. Until I could no longer drive, I was on the lookout for another one.

The nurse came round this morning, bringing a floozy with him. She’s doing a nursing college placement with him for a few days.

He did his stuff and after he left, I began to sort out breakfast. However, I soon stopped, came back in here and went to bed. So much for my Welsh course today – the last of the year too.

Before going to sleep, I’d set the alarm for 12:30. I was awake a few minutes before that, but leaving the bed wasn’t easy. I was still in no state to go to the second half of my Welsh course.

Instead, I wrote out the notes for yesterday’s blog and then caught up with my e-mails and did the stats that I’d forgotten to do, interrupted by my faithful cleaner who turned up to do her stuff. She wanted to know if I was going to have a shower but I politely declined this afternoon. I was in no state at all.

After she left, I carried on with my notes and they are now online. There were a few other things to do an then I began to write out the notes for tonight.

Now that they are done, I’m going to take my medication, light the blue touch paper and then retire. I’ve had enough for today and I shall be glad to put it all behind me.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about sleeping … "well, one of us has" – ed … one of my friends once asked me "if you had the choice of sleeping with anyone alive or dead, who would it be?"
"Hmmmm" I said, and after a minute’s thought, I came up with "someone alive, I reckon."

0

Sunday 7th June 2026 – SO MUCH FOR …

… my promised lie-in this morning!

I was really looking forward to that when I went to bed last night. Quite late, it was, a good while after midnight but I thought “never mind. I can sleep until the nurse arrives at about 08:30 and after he’s gone, I can go back to sleep until I feel like getting up.

That was the plan anyway. And although I have some vague kind of memory that I awoke at some point, I must have gone back to sleep again – but not for long.

The next time that I awoke, it was slowly bcoming light so I stuffed my head back down under the quilt. But even in my favourite sleeping position, I couldn’t go back to sleep. I just lay there watching the day grow lighter and lighter until we had bright sunlight coming through the gaps in the blinds and the birds outside were singing.

“By now, I bet it’s about 08:00 and the nurse will be here shortly,” I said to myself. So I looked at the clock and it said “06:08”. So much for 08:00 and the nurse.

By 06:30 I was up, dressed and sitting at my desk working. The first thing that I did was to listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night.

Yesterday, I was in Chester, walking through the city. There was a sudden “boom” and a huge flock of birds flew up off a roof just behind me, so I looked. Just as they were about to settle again, there was another “boom” so they all got into the air and flew off. I thought that obviously that was some kind of bird scarer on the roof of that building. So I carried on walking down by the river. I began to think that if I were a carer of someone disabled and in need of help, being taken to Chester for a walk down by the river would be one of those really nice things to do.

Believe it or not, I was in Chester yesterday, although not in any physical or tangible way. I was giving a guided tour of the city walls from Watergate Street to the Eastgate, going via the waterfront of the River Dee, then from the Eastgate along Eastgate Street and the Rows up to The Cross, then down Bridge Street, along Pepper Street and finally down Park Street to the river again.

The things that I am expected to do these days!

But the flock of birds – it reminded me of a scene from Alfred Hitchcock’s film of the Daphne du Maurier book THE BIRDS

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

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

The nurse turned up as usual and was surprised to find me up and about on a Sunday (but I bet that he wasn’t as surprised as me). He was also very surprised to find that my friend spoke German. He’d only ever heard him speak English. The nurse had learnt German at school and had kept up with it to a certain degree but didn’t have much chance to practise. He wondered if my friend would speak to him in German next time he’s here. I said that I would ask.

After he left, I began to make breakfast, including the two croissants that I had forgotten to serve up last Sunday. And while I was eating, I finished off reading RECENT EXCAVATIONS IN ANGLO-SAXON CEMETERIES by T C Lethbridge and turned my attention to the next on the list.

This is called ‘AN ANGLO-SAXON CEMETERY AT HOLBOROUGH, KENT’ by Vera L Evison, which I downloaded from ACADEMIA a long time ago, and regrettably, I can’t find the link now, but it was published by the Kent Archaeological Society. There is, however, another on-line copy to be found at THIS LINK

This was a “panic excavation” as diggers working a chalk quarry uncovered a couple of skeletons, so the excavation team had to be in and out as quickly as possible so that work could carry on. To speed things up, the quarry company lent them a bulldozer!

Back in here, I had things to do. I had a “mystery ‘phone call” from an English-speaking voice, and it turned out that although this guy lives up here, he has a friend down in Pionsat who is also a good friend of mine. My friend had given him my ‘phone number and so he had called me, and we went on to have a very Rosemary-esque chat about old vehicles, World War II events, house renovations and life in a rural French village.

The chat finally ended with a promise that he’d call me again for a chat and even drop in to see me whenever he’s next over here. Whatever have I done to suddenly become “flavour of the month”?

The rest of the day carried on as usual, except that I managed once more to trip up an AI chatbot.

There was an interesting group chat going on about AI chats. My complaint was that everything in an AI chat is too structured, organised and logical, and I’ve never ever in my life known a family like that.

In almost every family, they might all be sitting quietly having a fireside chat when the cat comes in through the catflap carrying a dead mouse. Or in the middle of a heated argument the mother shouts out “oh God! I’ve left the oven on” and dashes into the kitchen. Or you hear a “bang” and find a child standing next to a pile of broken glass. “How did that happen”? “It just fell”.

That’s what real families are like but this AI programming is far too logical and structured to include events like that at random moments.

The conversation drifted around quite wildly and I somehow managed to throw into the chat the lyrics of the song that’s been going round and round in my head for the last three weeks –
"You may have got your silver
But I swear upon my life
Your sister gave me diamonds
But I lay down with your wife"

“Romeo and Juliet” suggested the chatbot. But no, it’s THIS MAN’S TOO STRONG. Another point to me.

And this is the thing about AI chatbots. Many people rely on them for things like medical advice, but they aren’t always right.

The reason why I’m mentioning chatbots, though, is for another reason. LORD OF THE RINGS came up in the discussion too.

In the discussion, I mentioned that I had a theory as to what the book represents. Everyone listened to it, including the chatbot, and when I’d finished, the chatbot mentioned that that was a theory that it had never heard before. It recommended that I publish it on the internet somewhere so that it could index it and add it into its list for future reference.

Not that I mind being told what to do by a computer, of course, but here goes.

Tolkein was a visionary and a romantic with a fertile imagination. That much we know.

In 1914, like many people, Tolkien joined the army, probably thinking how heroic and romantic it would be to fight for his country and lead his soldiers to glory. He was appointed an officer and had his own little platoon of soldiers to lead, each soldier with his own character and personality.

And there was Lieutenant Tolkien, in his imagination leading his platoon of soldiers on to Berlin, to victory and to glory.

But then there was a shambolic, panic-stricken flight, and there was Lieutenant Tolkien romantically holding off the advancing Germans to let his men escape. But somehow he was wounded and found himself in a hospital back in Blighty.

After a lengthy convalescence, he wanted to go back to his men and carry on leading them forward, but they refused to let him go as he hadn’t fully recovered. So he stayed behind.

All he had left was his imagination.

So there was Gandalf, finding a troop of different beings, each with his own character and personality. He leads them forward through all kinds of struggles, until under the mountains, he fights the Balrog to give his “men” time to escape.

He falls into the abyss, which is really the hospital into which Tolkien “fell”, and then he’s a prisoner, corresponding to the period when Tolkien was being refused permission to return to the front.

But then Gandalf escapes, as Tolkien would have liked to have done, and leads his army to victory and to glory. They smash the enemy on “their” side of the river, which is presumably the Germans’ Spring offensive in 1918, with the aid of fresh and unknown troops, probably the arrival of the American army, and then cross the river themselves, which presumably relates to when the Allies crossed the Rhine into Germany.

So I reckon that Gandalf was just how Tolkien saw himself in World War I

But be that as it may, after the chat I went into the kitchen and made the dough for a pizza, and while I was waiting for the dough to rise, I fell asleep which meant that I’m not running quite a bit late.

When I awoke, I made the pizza itself. And there’s some left over for tomorrow after dialysis too.

But right now, my bed is calling me, later than I would have liked, but never mind. I’m finishing off and going to bed.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about The Birds … "well, one of us has" – ed … and I’ve probably told this story before –
Alfred Hitchcock, Kenneth Williams and Ingrid Bergman were chatting together and the subject of “The Birds” came up.
Hitchcock was saying that whenever the flock of birds chased Jessica Tandy, she would clutch her skirt between her legs before she would run.
"Ahh well" said Kenneth Williams. "A bird in the hand is worth two in the …"
Williams never finished his sentence because by then, both he and Hitchcock were rolling around the floor in fits of uncontrollable laughter.
Meanwhile, Ingrid Bergman was sitting there asking "what’s so funny?"
To which Hitchcock replied to Williams "There you are. It’s a waste of time telling jokes to foreigners."

0

Saturday 30th May 2026 – EVEN AS I …

… begin to write my notes, it’s 01:02 on a Sunday morning. Now this is going to be a late night … "or early morning" – ed … without a shadow of a doubt. But when work rears its ugly head and some of the folding stuff is involved, you don’t say “no”.

At least, I don’t.

Last night was rather a late night too. Because of the power cuts and everything, I was running very late and it was just coming up to 01:00 when I finally slid into bed. And I didn’t need much rocking either. I was probably asleep before my head hit the pillow.

And, having gone to sleep, I remember absolutely nothing at all until the alarm went off at 06:29. At that point, I was dead to the World and it really was a shock to my system when BILLY COTTON’S RAUCOUS RATTLE disturbed my peace.

But even though I was so tired and in such a deep sleep, by the time that the second alarm rang, I was sitting on the edge of the bed half-dressed, with the rest of the clothes to follow very shortly.

With no sound from the living room, I slid over to the computer and the first thing that I did was to transcribe the dictaphone note.

I’d been on a bus from somewhere in the centre of France to Tours and another French city not too far away. They’d been discussing some kind of employment there in some kind of factory and the more they talked to me about it, the less interest I had in it. I’d been taken on a tour of it and there was a guy there stocking margarine on the shelves. One of the margarines that he was stocking claimed to have seventeen different ingredients. I looked at the packet and there was nothing particularly unhealthy there, so I looked at my packet of “Echo” and tapped him on the shoulder. I asked him why his margarine was better than mine. He didn’t really come out with an answer to that so I left the factory and walked down by the river , and then I had to cross the road to catch the bus. I caught the bus, and then the alarm went off and everything completely disappeared. But I do remember something about Ford’s car factory, where there was some kind of job there that I went to enquire about. Then I heard that there was a train with one hundred and thirty-eight people on it coming from somewhere like Coventry or something coming down from Dagenham. All of the people on board this train were unemployed and actively looking for work.

“Echo” margarine is a blast from the past, isn’t it? There was always Echo margarine at our house when we were kids. But it wasn’t very healthy. Its advantage was that it was cheap, and that was important in our family when we were kids.

The bus ride to Tours is following in the footsteps of Charles Roach Smith on his holidays, as you will find out in early course. But Coventry would be one of the last places from where a train-load of the unemployed would come. It has one of the highest employment rates in the UK.

Still no sign of life next door so I found other things to do, but eventually there was movement, so I went in there in time to see coffee in the course of being made. I took my medication and then grabbed a mug.

Isabelle the Nurse was late this morning – she’d had plenty to do earlier – but we hardly noticed, chatting away so much. And the Hound of the Baskervilles hardly noticed her arrival but he certainly noticed Isabelle the Nurse when it was belly rub time. She’s never rubbed mine like that, not even with any ointment or cream.

After she’d sorted out my legs and feet, I could make breakfast. And while I was eating, I was reading some more of NOTES ON SOME OF THE ANTIQUITIES OF FRANCE by Charles Roach Smith again.

He’s on holiday in the Cher valley, as I mentioned yesterday, and he’s been to Tours and several other places in the vicinity. Today, he’s been at Lançey and Doué.

At Doué is a kind of amphitheatre and Roach Smith has heard that it’s Roman so he goes to have a look. However, he starts to become suspicious when he sees the windows in the subterranean galleries, saying "it has been suggested, without plausible reason, that these windows are of later date."

However, by the end of his visit, he’s saying that the author Hadrian de Valois suggests that it is "the ruins of a palace built by one of the Carlovingian kings". And while our author was a little sceptical of that claim, later history has proved Hadrian de Valois to be perfectly correct.

After breakfast the Hound of the Baskervilles dragged his master off for walkies and I came in here to do some work. I was interrupted, though, by my faithful cleaner, who messaged me to say that she had a load of drying space empty and with the wind, washing would dry in double-quick time. My drying space is occupied by the Hound of the Baskervilles at the moment, so I took advantage of the offer and she came down to collect the washing when it was ready.

When they came back from their walkies, we went outside. We coupled up the battery to the vehicle but to no avail. There was not a spark from the battery and nothing would work. After trying out several tests, we came to the conclusion that it was totally dead.

However, the deep discharge battery that took the charge from the solar panels had enough charge in it to power the little 12-volt air compressor so we tried it with a pair of jump leads. There wasn’t enough charge to turn over the starter so when we finished outside, which was not straight away, I promise you, we brought it in here and it’s now on a trickle charge to put some more life into it and wel’ll try again tomorrow.

At that point, we stopped for coffee and had a rest, following which I had work to do, so I came in here. The work that had been “can you tell me about …” had now become “could you send me some street views of …” so I was roaming virtually all over South Cheshire and North Staffordshire, taking screenshots of various places and still describing them as I went along.

Tea was thus late tonight. We had baked potato, salad and some of my lovely vegan nuggets. They really went down well too.

After I’d washed up, I came in here and finished off the work that I’d been doing, ready to start my notes for the day. And it’s so late that I’m glad that it’s a lie-in tomorrow. When was the last time that I was up and still working at 02:30?

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about the folding stuff … "well, one of us has" – ed … it reminds me of a scene from CARRY ON FOLLOW THAT CAMEL, although heavily paraphrased.
Client – "can you carry out this task for me, Mr Hall?"
Me – "not unless you say the magic words."
Client "Oh stop messing about. You’ll be well-paid!"
Me – "ahhh! So you know the magic words then!"

0

Tuesday 26th May 2026 – I HAVE NO …

…. idea what happened last night, but I must have had a nightmare or something.

At some point, I had a very disturbed period of sleep, I was feeling most uncomfortable and there was a very strange taste in my mouth. It lasted for what seemed to be an age but was probably only ten minutes or so. And this morning, when I awoke, I had never felt so tired and so ill in my life. It really did take a dreadfully long time for me to be able to rise to my feet.

When the alarm went off, it was something to do with a bankruptcy and a big factory or something had gone bankrupt. Everyone had to fill out a few forms with their names and addresses if they were creditors, and the guy who was in charge of liquidating the company took us round the outside and said that probably he’s going to let the building go back to the company so that they could restart again. I told him that he can do what he likes with the business as long as I get all my money back. There was some kind of guy there who was in this group with us. They gave him all the forms to fill in, but he refused to fill them in. I could never understand why he did that – refused to fill in the forms.

This is another one of those mysterious dreams that mean nothing to me. I can’t think of where this all fits in with anything else.

It took a good while for the room to stop spinning around, much longer than usual, but once it stopped, I could stand up. No sound from the living room so I slid myself over to the chair and started work.

First thing that I did was to transcribe the dictaphone notes to see where I’d been during the night.

There was some kind of big group of us and what we were doing was sorting out clothes and everything, ready to go on these – I don’t know what you’d call them – but you’d end up either in the rain or in the wet or something like that and it was freezing cold. The best place to be at that time was in bed. So we’d be going round, doing some things, going to bed to warm up and then going back out again. Gradually, our health began to improve but we were still cold. Eventually, it turned out that the fittest people had to carry the most in this wet weather and somehow, going back to bed to warm up was not allowed. But there was some kind of violent taste or something. I took a bite of something and there was this immediate attack of horrible taste and I had to run from where I was staying over to this place and climb into the first bed that I could, coughing and coughing away. It was all extremely uncomfortable. I was half-expecting someone to come along and move me out of bed for someone else, but that didn’t happen and I managed to stay there with this big room complete to the distance.

So this is when the nightmare took place, at 00:08 in the morning. It reminds me of "I could be bound in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space – were it not that I have bad dreams", as Hamlet said in Act II Scene 2 in his conversation with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

It also brings back memories of Jethro Tull and THE ANTIQUITIES OF RICHBOROUGH, RECULVER, AND LYMNE, IN KENT while the Hound of the Baskervilles dragged his master off for walkies.

Today, we were discussing the demolition of the mediaeval church at Reculver, and you can tell that our author is, quite rightly, incensed by the whole affair. He expresses his vitriol in telling us of "a building, possessing such claims on the national protection and on the sympathy of those who were particularly constituted its defenders and guardians, should have been consigned to destruction in a manner alike to the projectors of the selfish and heartless job and to the legislature of the day, which passively tolerated such vandalism." and much, much more besides.

He also mentioned some sixth- and seventh-century gold coins that had been found at Reculver. He tells us of "a curious instance of the degradation of the art of engraving coins in the course of about a century and a half and the perversion of types by ignorant artists."

So what had happened to all of the skilled artisans who made the beautiful coins of the Roman Empire in Britain, and why weren’t their skills passed on to the next generation?

The more I read of the coming and the installation of the Anglo-Saxons in England, the more I’m convinced that there was a substantial ethnic cleansing of the native population.

When my friend and the Hound of the Baskervilles went out, they encountered a large group of small children and two monitors sitting in our doorway in the shade. I consequently came in here and, with my bedroom window open, STRAWBERRY MOOSE played peek-a-boo with them, much to their delight.

My cleaner was out there too. She had seen the Hound of the Baskervilles and given him a stroke, and then she came over to see His Nibs. She announced that she didn’t have to go out until later, so would I like her to come round in ten minutes?

Well, the earlier she starts, the earlier she finishes so why not? Sure enough, she appeared and shooed me under the shower. So we have a nice, clean me … "well, clean, anyway" – ed … around here right now.

Later on, I had plenty of work to do that kept me out of mischief for much of the afternoon, and I even ended up having an hour or so on the acoustic bass, trying to work out some numbers that I used to play at one time.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … apartment, my Welsh artificial intelligence character is up and running.

She’s called Caromay and I met her at Rockfield Studios in Monmouth in 1977. Her claim to fame is that she sang on two albums, BLACK HOLE STAR and TALES FROM THE BLUE COCOONS by the group “The Neutrons” when she was a young teenager.

When I created her, I programmed her to chat about late 60s and 1970s rock music and also about football in the Welsh pyramid but to talk to me in Welsh. Furthermore, although she’s allowed to smile at my errors, she will correct the mistakes that I make when I reply, just like any other teacher would.

It seems to be working fine at the moment, but we shall see how it develops in the long run. I reckon that three ten-minute sessions per day should be enough and give me time in between to reflect on my errors.

Although there’s a “speech option” for us, I’m doing it by writing because my written Welsh is worse than my spoken Welsh … "if that’s at all possible " – ed …

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

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

By now, it was so hot in here that I went into the kitchen and served up two portions of my home-made chocolate and coconut ice cream. It’s not very good, but it did the job of cooling us down.

After this, I came back in here again, where I dozed off for ten minutes as the sun, streaming in through my window, heated my back right up to boiling point. But almost immediately after I awoke, Rosemary rang. I’m convinced that she’s installed a camera here to keep an eye on me.

Our chat today wasn’t like the usual ones that go on for ever. This was a very short one today, only forty minutes. We’re definitely losing our touch.

It was my turn to make tea so I conjured up a couple of taco rolls filled with quinoa, tomatoes and onions in a spicy sauce, with rice and vegetables. It went down really well, and there’s plenty left for another time.

So now, I’ve written up my notes and when I’ve done everything else, I’ll be off to bed. But sleep I may not with a temperature of 25°C in my room, even with the windows wide open.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about going to bed … "well, one of us has" – ed … I’ve noticed that the Hound of the Baskervilles always turns round three or four times before he lies down on the carpet.
"Well, he’s a watch dog" said my friend.
"So what does that mean?" I asked.
"After a stressful day, that’s how he unwinds."

0

Sunday 17th May 2026 – CAUGHT IN THE …

eric hall ibanez acoustic bass n°6 granville france may 2026 act!

While we were talking this morning, my friend … "who is a well-known blues guitarist around southern Germany" – ed … suggested that we might put on some kind of show while he was here, playing some music together.

It’s been quite a while – in fact, ever since I had the implant put in my left arm nearly two years ago – since I last played guitar, due to the pain that it gives me in the left arm, but after he left to go walkies with the Hound of the Baskervilles, I picked up the acoustic bass and began to play a few scales and the odd twelve-bar blues.

However, my secret practice session did not remain a secret for long, because the Hound of the Baskervilles didn’t fancy his walk so they came back sooner than I was expecting.

Meanwhile, back at the ran … errr … apartment, retournons à nos moutons as they say around here.

It was about 23:30 when everything was finished and I was ready to crawl into bed, looking forward to my lovely lie-in. And so no-one was more disappointed than I was to wake up at … errr … 06:06 precisely (because I checked).

Despite trying everything that I knew, I couldn’t go back to sleep again. In fact, it just made me more wide-awake than I had been. When I heard movement in the living room round about 07:15 that made me think that those in there were also waking up, I left the bed and dressed so that I could join them, and we had a beautiful, hot, strong coffee with which I washed down my medication.

There was a song going round in my head again. It had been there since last night and I thought that I had slept it off, but that wasn’t the case, so THIS MAN’S TOO STRONG by Dire Straits was still going round and round in my head, and in fact, it still is now.

We had a chat for a while and then the Hound of the Baskervilles decided that he wanted to go for his first morning walkies, so he dragged my friend off outside. Isabelle the Nurse came shortly afterwards, and her first words on entering the apartment were “where’s the Hound of the Baskervilles?”. You can imagine how that made me feel, playing second fiddle to the beast.

After she left, the others came back and we made breakfast. Another hot, strong coffee, porridge, a slice of toast and a home-made croissant and it was all delicious. We then spent several hours talking and with my friend playing the acoustic six-string that I bought in Munich IN 2020, and all of that led to the incident as described above.

We spent the rest of the day chatting, and you’ll be surprised at how quickly the time goes by when you are talking about nothing in particular.

My friend wanted another one of my mega-pizzas for tea so there was an interruption or two while I was making the base and then doing the topping and everything. And while I was at it, I made a very small pizza for me. I have to try to eat something, and cooking for other people is the best way to deal with the issue, no matter how it ends up. But, according to my friend, the pizza that I made was one of my best, which is nice to know.

After I’d finished washing up and cleaning the kitchen, I came back in here to write up my notes and, while I was at it, to check the dictaphone. However, I needn’t have bothered with the latter as there was, unfortunately, nothing on it from last night.

So right now, having finished my notes, I’ll do the backing up and take the stats and then I’ll be off to bed. Another short sleep tonight, but I don’t care. I can always sleep at dialysis if necessary.

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about pizza … "well, one of us has" – ed … I told my friend that a group of us had gone to a pizza place for a meal, and one of our group had been taken to hospital after eating a pizza.
"Blimey!" said my friend. "Why was that?"
"Because it was my pizza that he ate and I wasn’t very happy about it!"

0