and more importantly<\/p>\n
Nothing is as certain as it was before.<\/p>\n
Except for one thing – and that is that going to bed early and sleeping longer doesn’t make the slightest bit of difference. After the medication (and I missed the alarm by about 10 minutes) I had a look at the dictaphone.<\/p>\n
And that was when I realised that going to bed earlier and sleeping longer means that I just have more time to travel farther during the night.<\/p>\n
And how!<\/p>\n
We started off the night with some kind of court case about something and the Judge wanted something clarifying so he asked his clerk to drive his bus for him into some other kind of area. This bus was an old half-cab double decker but with the cab on the left. He could see vaguely where he was reversing to so that he could turn round. But his rear wheels were wedged up against the pavement so he couldn’t move. People were looking there wondering what on earth was happening but I just walked round – because it was actually the back end of a bed now – and just picked it up and pivoted it round so the driver could move. There was much more to it than that but I can’t remember now. It all went when I went to grab hold of the dictaphone
\nA little later, Chris de Burgh was singing a song by Al Stewart, or was it the other way round, Modern Times or something, and they had to turn round in the middle of it, but he couldn’t turn round so we all had to step back two steps to give him plenty of time to reverse and turn round again. Again I can only remember a bit of it but there was a lot more to it than that.
\nThen back to the Isle of Wight again and the fact that no ferries were running over to the Isle of Wight and everyone was pleased by that for it stopped the infection spreading there.
\nlater still, we were on board ship again The Good Ship Ve … errr … Ocean Endeavour, half a dozen of us. We’d been summoned up to the top room at the top of the spiral staircase. Everyone went up in the lift but I was doing something and missed the lift so I had to run up. There, they were handing out a box like a Waddington’s toy box but it was a navigation kit designed by a guy called Ross from Australia or New Zealand about where to go and what to do. There was a Luger pistol there and we were talking about that. I suggested sticking it in the back of your trousers so as to hide its shape and so on. We had a lively discussion about that and about how often people tend to look above the skyline at something particularly in the dark and don’t tend to see what’s below the skyline so you can skulk in the shadows. He recounted the story of an Italian who has spent all World War II going around murdering people because he’d been doing just that.
\nSome time later I was with someone called Dorothy, Shirley Temple, an American child star. There was another woman with me whom I knew and we’d arranged to interview her. We had lots of questions to ask her about her life as a child star and how she went into business but gave that up in World War II to entertain the troops, then every now and again released an album. She was singing quite a few of her songs to us. Her final album was one about infections diseases. I was dying to interview her about this because I had loads of questions about why she had chosen this subject to make an album. I was hoping that she would quickly get to the end of her song. Then she had a text message from her boyfriend to ring him back, all of this sort of thing and I could see that my interview was slowly being pushed back. If we weren’t careful we’d end up running out of time. But she was talking about New York, how she went to New York, went on a Greyhound bus. They’d got in at something like 06:00 and asked her mum at the bus station “is this where I do my song now?” and her mother was bad-tempered with her but her mother was probably exhausted after the bus journey and all this kind of thing. It was so real, a really real kind of situation
\nFrom there we were in some kind of naval base, a harbour, talking to one of her crew, people who were in charge. he had this big Red Ensign and he was taking it down on the sea wall in order to fly it at the very end of the harbour but I was wondering, with this epidemic, would he have very much chance to see it fly.
\nAnd we haven’t finished yet – not by a long way. I’d gone into my office on a Saturday morning and there was one of the cleaners who instead of cleaning out the weeds between the edge of the path and the wall was doing something different so I asked her her “are you putting the weeds back in, madam?”. She gave a little laugh. I was carrying a garden hoe and I went to where I sat but in my in-tray was a load of what I assumed was soil with little white bits like desiccated coconut on top in huge clumps. Everyone looked at me strangely. I said “seeing as I was passing with a hoe, like you do on a Sunday, only it’s Saturday today because I have to come in tomorrow, and i’d break all of these up” So I started to hoe all of these big lumps of soil. Where this was going I have no idea but this was when the alarm went off
\nYes, I’d introduced myself as King Hook of the pirates and Hastings was there. he said “shouldn’t you have a hook on the end of your hand?”. I said “no, King Hook, not Captain Hook”. I then started again with two boys playing football but I didn’t get very far as the second alarm awoke me.<\/p>\n
It’s hardly surprising that I was too exhausted to leave my bed before the third alarm this morning. So would you be with all of that going on during the night. I’m surprised that I had any time at all for sleeping.<\/p>\n
After breakfast I had an attack at another four albums to digitalise. Apart from two tracks that didn’t want to work and I had to find another method to circumvent the problem, it went pretty easily, albeit pretty slowly.<\/p>\n
It gave me time to deal with some of the photos from July 2019 on board The Good Ship Ve … errr … Ocean Endeavour, but not as many of those as I would have liked either, because I’ve ended up at a place in Northern Iceland that I can’t remember what it’s called and for some reason that I don’t understand, because it’s not like me, I forgot to make a note.<\/p>\n
Once that was finished, I had a play around with the speakers, mixing and matching. I now have proper, complete stereo sound. It’s still not perfect because I’m using unmatched speakers and I really am going to have to acquire some more.<\/p>\n
But I’ve put out some feelers in that respect and I’m hoping for a reply.<\/p>\n
Having put all of that behind me, I started on the text for the two radio programmes on which I have been working. And by the time that i’d knocked off, I’d done about one and a half.<\/p>\n
There were plenty of distractions, many of my own making, I have to say, but I also had to transcribe some dictaphone notes into text for someone on the radio.<\/p>\n
So totally unsure of where much of today went, I had my usual hour on the guitar, and almost fell asleep three times while I was doing it.<\/p>\n
For tea, I found an Aubergine and kidney bean whatsit in the freezer. I’m not quite sure, but this may well be the last one out of the huge batch that I had.<\/p>\n
That will be the key to get down to making some more curries and so on, and I have a fancy for a lentil, potato and bean curry.<\/p>\n
First though, I’m going to empty out the freezer and see what there is (or isn’t) in there. For a start, there’s a bag of mixed veg that’s been in there since the Neolithic and could really do with being moved on. I could start by adding it to a couple of mass curries over the next couple of weeks.<\/p>\n
![\"joly](\"http:\/\/www.erichall.eu\/images\/2004\/2004001.jpg\")
<\/a>It was still light when I went out for my walk this evening.<\/p>\n