{"id":20890,"date":"2026-02-17T21:48:25","date_gmt":"2026-02-17T21:48:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/?p=20890"},"modified":"2026-02-17T21:48:26","modified_gmt":"2026-02-17T21:48:26","slug":"tuesday-17th-february-2026-having-waxed-lyrical","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/?p=20890","title":{"rendered":"
Tuesday 17th February 2026 – HAVING WAXED LYRICAL … <\/div>"},"content":{"rendered":"

… yesterday about how much better I was feeling, I was brought right back down to earth this afternoon when I had one of those famous collapses that I have every now and again.<\/p>\n

And it was looking so good too.<\/p>\n

Last night, I strolled through everything that I needed to do. Nothing seemed to stand in my way and I was actually in bed by about 22:15, having finished everything that needed to be done. And it’s not very often that I can say that.<\/p>\n

Not only that, I was asleep quite quickly too. However, you don’t need me to tell you what subsequently happened. You’ve heard me say it often enough, and you are probably just as sick as I am of hearing about it.<\/p>\n

So there I was, at 04:15 this morning, lying in bed, trying my best to go back to sleep but without any success at all. In the end, round about 05:45, I dragged myself out of bed and, in a mad fit of enthusiasm, dictated all of the radio notes that were outstanding.<\/p>\n

It has to be said, though, that I made a right dog’s breakfast of more than just a couple of them. Probably because at that time of morning, I can’t see straight enough to read my notes and I’m not awake enough to concentrate. There will be piles of editing to do, but it can’t be helped.<\/p>\n

After I’d finished, I staggered off into the bathroom to sort myself out, and then I went into the kitchen for my hot drink and medication. I really do like this hot lemon, honey and ginger drink, despite all of the rubbish that I’m obliged to take with it.<\/p>\n

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out what I’d been up to during the night.<\/p>\n

\nI dreamed that I was working for Birmingham City Transport. I was in a double-decker bus that had Route 454 on the front. I wondered where I was going because no-one had said a word to me. I tried to set the destination board to 000 but I somehow couldn’t manage to do it. It was displaying all kinds of numbers. The next thing that I remember was that I was in the middle of Birmingham Bus Station, in the middle where the buses wait to find an empty bay. Someone came along and said that I was in the wrong place. There were already one or two people on board so I set off to do a lap around the bus station to look for the bay for the 454. Everyone complained that I hadn’t picked up passengers, so I told them that I was doing a lap round to find the correct bay. They explained to me where I had to go, and there were half a dozen people waiting there, so I picked them up and drove out of the city centre. I had no idea where I was going, and we went there and these areas of total devastation where there had been acres and acres of demolition. By that time, there were just these two women on board. They explained to me that I had to take them to some kind of house where they were going to go for a visit. Of course, I knew nothing about this. No-one had told me a thing. I didn’t even know where this house was, so they said that they would guide me. In the end, we ended up walking through the countryside, chatting about all kinds of things, washing clothes in salt to remove bloodstains etc. And the views were wonderful. We met two other people and had a quick chat and just carried on walking into the countryside and we walked for miles. There were these two old Swedish Volvos parked at the side of the road. I noticed them, and they had foreign plates, but I couldn’t identify the plates at the moment. We were just chatting for hours as we walked through the countryside, and I had no idea at all what I was supposed to be doing.<\/div>\n

Now, this was a strange dream, if ever there was one. Firstly, I’ve never driven a double-deck service bus. Plenty of coaches of course, and plenty of single-deck service buses but not a double-deck service bus. and as for driving around Birmingham, I know the various ways in and out, but I’d be lost completely if I had to drive a service bus route. However, there was a Birmingham bus route 454 that ran from the city centre out to Smethwick and that way.<\/p>\n

So what would I be doing there? And why would I end up walking miles through the countryside with two women past a couple of pale green Volvos, two of the very last 164 models (I can still see them).<\/p>\n

As for removing bloodstains, at dialysis yesterday a large load of blood was actually spilled onto my T-shirt and needs to be cleaned. <\/p>\n

\nThere was also something about being at home with Nerina. She was drinking a bottle of beer, and she said that this particular beer was really nice. I said that my friend from Munich might be coming to stay for a while, and he likes a special kind of beer, and my brother likes a certain beer, so if my friend from Munich comes to stay we’ll fetch a few beers of each type and we can have a nice night in, and she seemed to like the idea. Then we decided that we’d have to tidy up and she wanted to put some things in the fridge. The fridge was full, so I had to shuffle everything around and in the end, I managed to fit these things in but a couple of bottles of wine wouldn’t fit on the shelves inside so I had to move some things out of the door shelves to put the wine in there and to put the things that were in the door shelves into the fridge somehow. But the bottom shelf of the fridge was full of peat and that kind of thing, composted soil. I had to dig a hole in it to stand these bottles of wine upright in it.<\/div>\n

This is probably a little more like it. Nerina wasn’t a beer drinker, but she would appreciate a very good beer very occasionally. I know that my friend does, because there’s a special order here every time that he tells me that he’s coming round. <\/p>\n

We were much more into wine back in the old days, Nerina and I, and back in the days thirty or forty years ago, a plate of cheese and a bottle of Burgundy would have been our heaven. Planting a bottle of wine in the soil in the fridge is a novel idea, though.<\/p>\n

And why would my brother be rearing his head in the middle of a convivial gathering?<\/p>\n

The nurse was really early today \u2013 barely 08:00. But the sooner he comes, the sooner he goes and that suits me fine. I could push on, make my breakfast and read some more of MAIDEN CASTLE EXCAVATIONS AND FIELD SURVEY 1985-6<\/a> by Niall Sharples.<\/p>\n

And we are reaching a really interesting point in the book, a point that has me fascinated. Firstly, he and his team are able to interpret the climate to such a precise extent that, judging by the state of the soil and vegetation immediately underneath it, they can tell you that the prehistoric burial mound in the middle of the hillfort was begun when it was pouring down with rain. And it doesn’t become any more precise than that.<\/p>\n

Furthermore, by examining the mollusc (snails, etc.) remains in the various layers of soil, his team can tell you that the land was first climax woodland, then cleared, then abandoned and returned to scrub and woodland, then cleared again, then overgrazed and overworked, then heavily eroded and left to grassland with occasional farming. Different types of molluscs flourish in different types of soil and vegetation, and examining their remains in the different layers of soil can pinpoint the vegetation (or lack thereof) at the time.<\/p>\n

But interestingly, I was dragged off on a tangent to an article about the “Beaker People”. Their culture (there’s a dispute as to whether the people came with their culture or not) arrived in Southern England round about 2500 BC and died out round about 1800 BC, to be replaced by the Bronze Age. What is significant about this period is that during that relatively short time period, about 90% of the genetic make-up of the population of Southern and Eastern England was displaced by an equivalent genetic make-up from Eastern Europe.<\/p>\n

Back in here later, I had a few things to do and then I read a couple more chapters of my Welsh course book to do a little revision. However, what with my Teflon brain, nothing will stick.<\/p>\n

After that, I had an important task to perform. What with one thing and another … "and until you make a start, you have no idea just how many other things there are" – ed<\/em> … I hadn’t filed away my correspondence for well over six months, and there were mountains of paperwork everywhere. So I sat down, sorted through it, threw away a pile of unnecessary paperwork and then filed the rest. <\/p>\n

It goes without saying that I really ought to be much more organised than I am, although I have said that a hundred times before, and still, nothing has changed.<\/p>\n

My faithful cleaner turned up later and shooed me into the shower for a good scrub up and so that I smell nice, not that it will make much difference, I suppose. And then afterwards, we did our monthly sort through the medication and organised a few other things too while we were at it.<\/p>\n

After she left, I came back in here to sit down, and that was when I was overwhelmed by an enormous wave of fatigue. I crashed out completely, and for over two hours too. I don’t think that I’ve ever been so far out as I was this afternoon. So much so that when I was finally able to move, I had to have one of these caffeine-laden energy drinks.<\/p>\n

Eventually, I managed to pull myself together again and I finished choosing the music for the next radio programme, reformatting where necessary, re-editing and reconverting it. <\/p>\n

Tea tonight was a vegan burger with pasta and ratatouille, followed by the last of the jam roly-poly. I’ll have to think of a new dessert for tomorrow, but if all else fails, I bought some tinned fruit, having had my taste buds titillated by the fruit that my neighbour brought me the other week.<\/p>\n

But that’s tomorrow. Right now, I’m off to bed, later than usual. And who knows? Maybe I might have a good sleep tonight. Wouldn’t that be nice?<\/p>\n

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about shuffling … "well, one of us has" – ed<\/em> … it reminds me of a friend of mine from when I lived in Chester who was bewailing his back luck at the racecourse during one of the racing weeks.
\n"I don’t understand it"<\/em><\/strong> he said. "If I’m having a game of cards, I usually always win, but at the racetrack, I never seem to win anything"<\/em><\/strong>
\n"Well, you shouldn’t blame yourself"<\/em><\/strong> I replied. "It’s not your fault that they won’t let you shuffle the horses."<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

0<\/span><\/a><\/div> <\/div>
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… yesterday about how much better I was feeling, I was brought right back down to earth this afternoon when I had one of those famous collapses that I have every now and again. And it was looking so good too. Last night, I strolled through everything that I needed to do. Nothing seemed to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1710,4507,1616,8571,16250,334,12057],"tags":[3501,16458,13133,5577,1302,3357,212,1712,2482,2560,5565,8581,5714,13341,14279,16454,5385,16453,12058,8231,462,320,6834,8309],"class_list":["post-20890","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cleaner","category-eric-hall-2","category-france","category-granville","category-n6","category-nerina-hall","category-nurse","tag-archive-org","tag-beaker-people","tag-bouquet-granvillais","tag-cleaner","tag-crash-out","tag-donald","tag-dream","tag-early-night","tag-early-start","tag-eric-hall","tag-france","tag-granville","tag-hans-field","tag-home-made-lemon-ginger-drink","tag-jam-roly-poly","tag-maiden-castle-excavations-and-site-survey","tag-nerina-hall","tag-niall-sharples","tag-nurse","tag-ratatouille","tag-shower","tag-tidying-up","tag-vegan-burger","tag-welsh"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20890","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20890"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20890\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20891,"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20890\/revisions\/20891"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}