This morning, our author, T Rice Holmes, is tying himself up in knots of his own making. On page 174 of his book he tells us that "it has been noticed that the monuments of the dead are most thickly strewn in the extreme west, as if the builders had desired that the spirits of those who had gone before them might look upon the setting sun"<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n On page 188 however he tells us that "interments were made on the southern or eastern side of the mound, doubtless in order that the dead might face the sun"<\/em><\/strong>.<\/p>\n The editor of Aunt Judy’s Magazine would be at home with our hero however. He goes on to say that "yet while the reader who has been accustomed to suppose that the Britons even of Caesar\u2019s time were mere savages may be astonished to learn that already in the Bronze Age in Britain, there was commercial intercourse between Britain and the Continent,"<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n He tells us that there was "evidences of intercourse between Scotland and Ireland"<\/em><\/strong>, which is presumably how the Isle of Man … "PERSON!" – ed<\/em> … was formed, and also that the different types of pottery and earthen vessels "throw light upon the origin of the round-headed invaders and upon the intercourse which subsisted in the Bronze Age between Britain and other lands"<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n This book is starting to warm up and there’s only another 500 pages to go.<\/p>\n Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. I dreamed last night that I was awake, sitting on the edge of the bed ready to stand up. When I actually did awaken, I was really disappointed to find that I was still in my own bed, hadn’t moved a muscle at all and it was 06:15. There had been another dream too that was somehow involved in this, a dream about some kind of new breakfast cereal that was being marketed in French amongst the Inuit but I can’t think of how that actually went now or where it fitted in. But certainly, when I was asleep, sitting on the edge of the bed, I had a feeling that there was another dream too and it concerned people and animals of the Arctic regions.<\/p>\n A little earlier I mentioned that I remembered nothing whatever of the night. But this dream is what I dictated, even if I do have no memory of it. I was fast asleep when I was dictating it, so was I having a dream within a dream again? <\/p>\n But the recent reams about the Arctic must mean that I’m yearning again. An American judge of the early 20th Century, called “Judge Malone” wrote about “The Lure of the Labrador Wild” and until you’ve been to Labrador, you won’t understand it. There’s also a similar call to the Arctic, experienced by people like Nansen and my namesake Charles F Hall and which I also experienced, and I want to go back, back at any price. <\/p>\n So apart from that I’ve done nothing at all. I’ve listened to some good music, carried out a long-overdue sorting out of a couple of directories on my computer in preparation for a mega-back-up next week and that’s everything. I hardly moved from my desk, not even when my cleaner came in to do his stuff.<\/p>\n While we’re on the subject of my cleaner … "well, one of us is" – ed<\/em> … apparently my disability is now registered as permanent and at the 80% threshold, and that’s without even going for that assessment at the Re-education Centre. I’ve had a communication from that organisation that deals with autonomy in the home to tell me that I’m now exempt from paying the Social Security contributions of my cleaner’s wages.<\/p>\n Whether that is good or bad news depends on your point of view, I suppose.<\/p>\n Tea tonight was falafel and chips with a vegan salad, followed by ginger cake and soya dessert. Simple but delicious <\/p>\n So tomorrow I’m back at the Dialysis Clinic for another painful session with no football to distract me. But the Welsh Premier League relegation scrap is now becoming intense, with four clubs now being sucked in and a seven-point gap to the club above. The transfer window opens next week and it will be interesting to see how clubs make use of it. We’re already seeing Aberystwyth and Y Drenewydd cutting loose several players ready to make the wages and squad numbers available for new signings.<\/p>\n So I’ll loiter around for a while and then go to bed. But I hope that I don’t have the same dream that a friend of mine had the other day . He told me "I dreamed last night that a genie appeared and offered me a wish"<\/em><\/strong>
\n"Just one?"<\/em><\/strong> I asked
\n"Yes. Just one"<\/em><\/strong> he replied. "And that’s not the best of it. he told me that whatever I wished for, he would give my wife double."<\/em><\/strong>
\n"So what did you say to that?"<\/em><\/strong> I asked.
\n"I told him to go away"<\/em><\/strong> he replied.
\n"Go away?"<\/em><\/strong> I asked, astonished.
\n"Yes"<\/em><\/strong> he said. "And then come back later when I wasn’t expecting him, and scare me half to death."<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n
