{"id":20963,"date":"2026-03-17T21:16:31","date_gmt":"2026-03-17T21:16:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/?p=20963"},"modified":"2026-03-17T21:16:32","modified_gmt":"2026-03-17T21:16:32","slug":"tuesday-17th-march-2026-what-a-horrible","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/?p=20963","title":{"rendered":"
Tuesday 17th March 2026 – WHAT A HORRIBLE … <\/div>"},"content":{"rendered":"

… twenty-four hours I have had. It has been without doubt one of the worst twenty-four hours of my life, and I don’t ever want to go through another period quite like it ever again, although I know that I probably shall.<\/p>\n

You might think that it all started very well, with actually being in bed … "for once" – ed<\/em> … at 21:48, and that won’t ever happen again unless I’m ill, but what happened is that I was in such misery with the constant coughing fits and the electric shocks running though the sole of my right foot that I scrambled through everything as quickly as I possibly could.<\/p>\n

Once in bed, though, it was a constant battle all the way through the night of falling asleep and then being awoken by either a coughing fit or a stabbing pain. It was absolutely awful.<\/p>\n

When the alarm went off, I’d already been awake for about fifteen minutes, but even so, I was in no state to haul myself out of bed, so tired was I. I missed the second alarm and in the end, it was rather late when I finally managed to crawl into the bathroom.<\/p>\n

After a wash, I went into the kitchen for my hot drink and medication, and all the time I was thinking “I wonder how long before I find myself back in bed again” \u2013 that is, if the coughing and the pain in the foot would let me.<\/p>\n

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. And I was surprised to find so much on there.<\/p>\n

\nOne of the Greek islands is in danger of being overrun by the Turks, but the Greeks were trying to make some kind of heroic defence out of it. They had a leader who was in charge of their army on his visit to Kyiv in 1903, but I wasn’t particularly impressed by him, every 25th December, I think. He was the person who wore a stained tattoo and was danger, so he had quite a cult following. One day, while there were the two operations going on, the Turks were searching for him, he came to stay at my lodgings in Canterbury for … fell asleep here<\/em> …<\/div>\n
\nGoing back to the dream about the Greek hero, when they were hot on his pursuit, they were marvelling at how small the windows were in his house etc., because it showed that he wasn’t very big himself, yet he managed to lead the Greeks on all kinds of standard adventures in the fourteenth century against the Ottomans, all kinds of hit-and-run adventures until the latter part of the thirteenth century and his name of Letterman or whatever it was, was quite clearly due to his ability in handling his fleet of boats<\/div>\n
\nThe Greeks kept up a resistance until the 1450s, when they were finally all overwhelmed by the Ottomans. The Ottomans made some kind of saint out of it, but the Greeks wanted to convert a cave into somewhere holy, called the Twelve something-or-other, but the Ottomans turned down their request to make monuments to any of their soldiers.<\/div>\n

These first three need no explanation. They clearly relate to the book, ESSAYS ON THE LATIN ORIENT<\/a> by William A Miller that I’ve been reading quite recently. It’s obviously getting to me, all of this.<\/p>\n

\nThere was some strange dream about someone who had bought a Volkswagen LT flatbed, and on top of the flatbed he’d put a wooden pickup body. There was some complication about the insurance, so he went off to his insurance broker and his broker rang up their office. The guy who was answering was totally surprised and wondered why he hadn’t taken off the flatbed and bolted the pickup body straight to the chassis. That would have been a much easier way of going about it. But he recommended that the guy take the vehicle to a vehicle inspection site, and if they pass it as safe, then there would be no problems with it.<\/div>\n

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I worked for two years in an insurance company in Chester after leaving school. I worked in the section dealing with commercial garage insurance, and so I’m quite used to dealing with strange quotations for unusual vehicles and equipment. However, I can’t recall anything like this.<\/p>\n

Isabelle the Nurse turned up as usual after her week’s break, and I’m afraid that I horrified her by talking about suicide. I was serious too, but that was the state in which I was this morning \u2013 in total and complete agony \u2013 and I couldn’t see a solution. You’ve no idea of the amount of pain in which I was and the discomfort with not having had a decent sleep.<\/p>\n

She urged me to talk to them at Avranches and to insist that they do something. I’ve tried all of that, of course, and so I don’t think that doing it again will help all that much, but we can try, I suppose.<\/p>\n

After she left, I made breakfast and read some more of ESSAYS ON THE LATIN ORIENT<\/a> by William A Miller.<\/p>\n

Today, we’re discussing the events on the island of Lesbos, and I do have to say that these Lesbians seem to be everywhere. But Lesbos is another one of these islands where the constant bickering between the Genoese, the Venetians and every other occidental power leave the door wide-open for the Turks to creep in.<\/p>\n

Back in here, I had things to do. And then I was able to carry on with the radio programme that I’d started over the weekend. Trying to assemble a concert out of a recording on a fire-damaged and smoke-covered tape is not an easy task, especially when there are holes in it everywhere, but I’ve done the best that I can.<\/p>\n

The quality is quite poor, and ordinarily I wouldn’t broadcast anything as bad as this, but its value is in its rarity. It’s never been played on air before, and it’s a recording of a landmark event that led to a very famous rock song being written about it, so it’s worth listening to just for that.<\/p>\n

My faithful cleaner turned up as usual to do her stuff, and she shooed me under the shower as usual. And for the first time in a long, long while, I actually felt like a human being afterwards.<\/p>\n

After the shower, we had a good chat, as we sometimes do. The good news is that there are some expensive kitchen knives on offer in the local supermarket, with a massive reduction if you have so many vouchers. My kitchen knives are rubbish after nine years of constant use so I need to replace them, and my cleaner has a whole raft of vouchers that she isn’t going to use.<\/p>\n

So next time she passes the supermarket … I just hope that they have some left.<\/p>\n

After she left, I finished off that radio programme and the notes, which are now ready for dictation. And then, dear reader, I had a little … errr … relax.<\/p>\n

\nWhile I’d been asleep during the late afternoon, my assistant and I had detained someone for questioning about a pretty innocuous incident, and we’d brought him to my office. I’d asked him several quite simple questions, but to my surprise, he’d refused to answer, even after I’d asked him several times. Consequently, after an hour or so, and as I had better things to do, I decided to leave him. My assistant had plenty of paperwork to do, mostly about other matters, so I left her in my office to supervise him, although not to talk to him, as she did her paperwork. Every now and again, I’d go back into my office for different reasons and also to check up on whether he was willing to answer, but he wasn’t so I ignored him each time. When it came round to 16:00, I typed out a formal order of detention, which was crazy when you consider what a simple matter it was, and took it into my office, where I pinned it up on the wall. I’d explained previously to my assistant to let me know when she wanted to leave to go home so that we could take our interviewee down to the cells for the night. However, she showed no signs of wanting to leave, looking for all kinds of jobs to do, even checking that the recycling system for the bins was working efficiently. Eventually, it came up to my usual time for going home, my assistant still showed no sign of wanting to leave, and so I was obliged to stay on.<\/div>\n

This is yet another dream that relates to absolutely nothing at all. I wonder what was going through my head while I was dreaming this.<\/p>\n

For almost two hours, I was away with the fairies … "although not in any way that would incite comment from the editor of Aunt Judy’s Magazine" – ed<\/em> … but when I awoke, I was feeling so much better, which was good news.<\/p>\n

Before tea, there was enough time to choose some music, from which I’ll select several for the following radio programme. I edited and remixed it all and even chose four of the tracks to include, which I paired and segued. I’ll do the rest tomorrow and write all the notes.<\/p>\n

And no Welsh class today? No, our teacher has gone to a funeral.<\/p>\n

Tea tonight was a lasagna from out of the freezer with vegetables in a cheese sauce, followed by another slice of my vegan cheesecake. And I didn’t enjoy the lasagna as much as I was hoping to. I think that my taste buds are changing yet again.<\/p>\n

So right now, I’m off to bed, with a busy day ahead of me. I hope that I can have a good night’s sleep tonight, because I need it.<\/p>\n

But before I go, seeing as we have been talking about feeling like a human being … "well, one of us has" – ed<\/em> … I remember fifty or so years ago when I played in a rock band and we were performing in a pub in Runcorn.
\nThe guitarist – singer whom we had began to sing "Sometimes, I feel like a motherless child …"<\/em><\/strong>
\nAnd a voice from out in front shouted "well, you’re not going to find a motherless child in here tonight, dear!"<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

0<\/span><\/a><\/div> <\/div>
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… twenty-four hours I have had. It has been without doubt one of the worst twenty-four hours of my life, and I don’t ever want to go through another period quite like it ever again, although I know that I probably shall. You might think that it all started very well, with actually being in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1710,44,4507,1616,8571,16250,12057],"tags":[3501,4788,13133,5577,1302,212,1712,2560,16468,5565,8581,13341,16480,2925,261,15372,12058,462,10893,1859,16469],"class_list":["post-20963","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cleaner","category-dream","category-eric-hall-2","category-france","category-granville","category-n6","category-nurse","tag-archive-org","tag-bad-night","tag-bouquet-granvillais","tag-cleaner","tag-crash-out","tag-dream","tag-early-night","tag-eric-hall","tag-essays-on-the-latin-orient","tag-france","tag-granville","tag-home-made-lemon-ginger-drink","tag-home-made-vegan-cheesecake","tag-jon-dean","tag-liz-terry-messenger","tag-n6","tag-nurse","tag-shower","tag-vegan-cheese-sauce","tag-vegan-lasagne","tag-william-a-miller"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20963","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=20963"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20963\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20964,"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20963\/revisions\/20964"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lesguis.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}