\nAnd then "can you confirm your four-figure security code?"<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n
if it looks like a rat and walks like a rat and smells like a rat, then it’s a rat. So this afternoon I’ve been cancelling bank cards, cancelling payments, applying for new cards, all that mullarkey. Anything to keep me busy and out of mischief;<\/p>\n
It’s not actually for want of anything else to do today. There has actually been quite a lot of it going on but we’ll get to it in due course.<\/p>\n
But last night I was hurried off to bed quite early – 22:30 in fact and they would have liked it to have been earlier than that. Apparently we have a couple of patients here who require more care than others and they don’t want anyone interrupting them when they might be busy.<\/p>\n
So off I crawled (and I DO<\/strong> mean “crawled”) into bed and lay awake listening to Simple Minds for a while before I fell asleep.<\/p>\n Apart from awakening to turn off the computer, that’s all that I remember, at least for the first part of the night. But round about 03:30 the banging and clattering began and that awoke me every now and again. <\/p>\n When they came to take a blood test at 06:20 this morning I was reliving the life of a young boy who was a rear gunner in a Bf110 at the time of the Battle of Britain describing a couple of his sorties from his point of view including the one where he was shot down and was pulled from his ‘plane by civilians because his ‘plane was on fire. He thought that he was going to be beaten to death but was surprised that they put him in an ambulance and sent him to hospital etc. Just as it was really becoming interesting in came this male nurse and I just don’t know how people can be as cheerful as that at 06:20 – I really don’t. <\/p>\n And there is plenty of evidence, by the way, of airmen, both enemy and friendly, baling out of crashing aeroplanes and being beaten to death by the civilians of both sides on landing during various wars.<\/p>\n Surprisingly I went back to sleep after that, even with this dramatic pain in my left heel, and was eventually awoken by the nurse who came to give me a bed-bath. She summoned a colleague to show her my right wrist, where tube goes on. Swollen like a balloon, it was this morning.<\/p>\n They had to disconnect the pipe, take out the fitting, put another fitting in my left wrist, to add to the mass of bruises already in the left arm. I wished the nurse “good luck finding a vein” but surprisingly she managed it, first go too. Not many people have done that.<\/p>\n They weighed me too, and when everyone had finished they brought me breakfast. While I was eating it a Traction Avant went past on the motorway across the field at the back here. And what’s surprising about that is not the fact that someone is risking a vehicle of technology of 80-90 years ago in modern motorway traffic, but that it’s in the outside lane passing everything in the inner one. And what’s surprising about that is not the fact that they’ve managed to wind it up to 130kph or whatever, but that they are hoping to stop it at that speed with an 80-90 year old braking system. I thought that I was crazy but it wasn’t until I had discs all round that I joined the 130kph revolution.<\/p>\n But that made me all nostalgic for my “Traction”, sitting in my warehouse in Montaigut with its two Cortina stablemates. I bought it on a whim 30 years ago with the idea of restoring it when I had some spare time. Whatever was I thinking of? It’s a later model, with the larger boot rather than the traditional one with the imprint of the spare wheel at the back. Nevertheless, I hope that whoever inherits my possessions has more fun with it than I did. <\/p>\n Later on my cute little specialist stuck her head in."I see that you lost another two kilos today"<\/strong><\/em> she said But the news is not so good. She’s talking about dialysis and “you won’t want to be coming here three times a week”. Ohh won’t I? It will probably be the only excitement that I’ll have, assuming that I’ll be able to leave and go back to the apartment. But imagine doing that three times per week for the rest of my life? What kind of life is that?<\/p>\n But even more darkly, she said "I haven’t yet spoken to your doctor in Paris about postponing your appointment for another 10-15 days but I will do, and I’m in contact with your taxi company about it".<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n So guess where I’ll probably next Monday instead of in Paris? My food supplies won’t hold out that long.<\/p>\n Once she’d left I began to type out the dictaphone notes from the night, and that wasn’t easy because the valve on the port the nurse put in my left wrist this morning is catching underneath the table. There was another long, rambling dream and I only remember the end of it. Five or six of us were chasing through London to catch a railway connection. We ended up in an Underground station, one of our usual recurring dreams. One or two of the people managed to buy tickets. The rest of us didn’t. We raced for the turnstiles – those with tickets passed through and the rest of us leapt the fence and ran down the hill. We found ourselves on the wrong side of the wall at the bottom and the station was on the other side. The Underground train that was going to take us to connect to our main line train came in and we couldn’t reach it. We eventually managed to make our way onto the platform but we reckoned that by the time the next train came in it would be far too late. One of the locals thought that it was amusing and was mocking us about it but we paid very little attention. He began to become rather aggressive with his “are you listening to me?” “can you hear me?” “why don’t you reply?” type of remarks as if he was actually looking to provoke some kind of confrontation. We were just completely devastated by missing our train<\/p>\n This is a recurring dream that I have, of being in a London Underground railway station in some kind of panic. And I’m not sure why either because being on the London Underground never played a great role in my life, even when I was living in Wandsworth. I seem to remember that I walked everywhere – miles, in fact.<\/p>\n Then I was at a Southern rock concert, something like the Marshall Tucker Band with a few multi-instrumentalists who varied the usual guitar solos with flute solos etc. What had happened had been that there had been some kind of competition in some kind of newspaper of magazine. I’d actually won it so I had free seats in the auditorium right in the centre front row first floor, the most perfect seat you could imagine to sit and watch this concert. I’d watched it from start to finish and could at one point sing all the songs that they were playing. Then I had to leave to catch my last train home. Just as I entered the house the girl of the house where I was staying tried to sneak in. She’d obviously sneaked out during the night for some reason. As she walked in her father pounced on her and asked her where she’d been so I piped up and gave her this perfect alibi that she’d obviously been with me at this concert and I could vouch for her good behaviour etc but you’ve no idea how sad that felt when I was doing that because I really did wish that she’d been with me. It would have been a wonderful evening. Instead I chose to give her an alibi for doing something else. As I said, I was just so really disappointed. But the music in this auditorium was magnificent and I wish that bands would play as well in real life as they do in my dreams.<\/p>\n And this girl! I can still see her now. She reminds me of someone I know or knew, but I can’t think who. She was young but had the most beautiful shape. She was wearing black tight-fitting silk-effect black trousers, a black waistcoat and a black cotton shirt with white stripes. Short, blonde, curly hair. In my younger days I would have taken a girl like that absolutely anywhere. But then, of course, nostalgia ain’t what it used to be. Right now I’m feeling very, very old. <\/p>\n After lunch, fighting off (sometimes unsuccessfully) wave after wave of sleep I dealt with the bank, a few spam ‘phone calls trying to sell me solar panels (and that reminds me – there are all the tubes and pipes of a solar hot water installation down on the farm, still in the box, never installed, that’s worth a good few thousand Euros).<\/p>\n And then a ‘phone call from the hospital in Paris.<\/p>\n They have found a copy of my latest blood test and want me to go there as a matter of urgency, if not emergency. I explained that it had all been picked up here o Friday and I was being hospitalised. He asked for details of my treatment so I told him, and apparently his treatment would be the same so I may as well stay here.<\/p>\n But if I do stay here, it won’t be for the food. Tonight’s tea was spinach in cream. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed<\/em> …. don’t be a vegan in a French hospital<\/p>\n So that’s about everything tonight, I reckon. I’ll post this and go back to reading my book on Iron-Age Hillforts.<\/p>\n But before I go, you have all probably guessed that I wasn’t assembled correctly and nothing is as it is supposed to be. And that includes my veins. The first person who ever succeeded in putting a needle into one of my veins first go was a nurse in a hospital in Belgium. And for the love of God SOMEONE BRING ME SOME FOOD!<\/strong><\/p>\n
\n"Weigh me now"<\/strong><\/em> I replied. "That laxative works far better than you can ever imagine"<\/strong><\/em>.<\/p>\n
\n"How did you manage that?"<\/strong><\/em> I asked her
\n"In 1982 and 1984"<\/strong><\/em> she said "I was Belgium’s national ladies’ darts champion"<\/strong><\/em> <\/p>\n
