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G: Ayup, midduck, yer looking rough…
I: You would be if yer had my unlucky stuff,
G: Complaining again, always moaning,
I: I’ve got cause for bemoaning & groaning,
G: Have I upset yer yet again?
I: Nae, I’m sorry, everything’s going wrong,
G: Yeah, tell that to every time I come along,
I: I always have bad luck attacking, with increasing unsolved problems amassing,
G: Yeah, I know that, obviously…
But helping you cope could be tricky,
I: All you do is take the piss out of me!
G: Can’t blame me if you’re off your trolley,
I: Do yer mean sort of mentally?
G: You’ve lived too long, yer going bonkers!
I: Nae, I’ve been that since the sixties,
G: Yeah, also a worthless bupkus…
I: Hang on, bupkus, what’s that? Tell us!.
G: Man of no value, significance, or substance!
I: Why are you making all these besmutches?
G: You were caught wearing bodices…
I: I was only four, they were my mams’
What’s all this to do with my problems?
G: Don’t get upset if I get carnaptious…
It’s what happens to your soul that matters,
I: You’ve come to add it to your collections?
G: Oh, aye, we Reapers are also clavigers,
I: Blimey, more rare words, go on tell us…
G: We’re your soul’s caretakers, custodians,
I: I’ve lost your plot, worra yer saying?
G: It’s compassion that I am relaying…
I can return your soul as you get buried…
So you must avoid being cremated…
See? I can have you resuscitated!
I: And I can live again? Sort of reactivated?
G: I guarantee you’ll not be disenchanted,
I: Reincarnation? Makes me feel dejected!
G: Typical answer, I expected!
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THE DAWN OF ANOTHER DAY
Saturday 16th June 2026
Terrible night again last night, but at least the crippling mind and body failures of Friday have not affected me at all this morning. I’m curious as to what caused my problems yesterday. But so glad that Carer Ejaz made the first call. To take good care of me, I appreciated that.
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I finished off yesterday’s blog, turned off the computer, and settled in to watch a series of three World Cup Matches. But, fell blistfully asleep. For the longest period of the night. About half an hour. Then Carer Andrew arrived and woke me up, much to my discontent.
Medicines taken, legs Cetraben-creamed, Shaking Shoulder Shirley & my back was Phorpain gelled. After the lad had gone, I felt sure that sweet Morphius would enfold me again.
He didn’t. For the next five hours, I kept nodding off, but only for a minute or two, and sprang awake accompanied by various elements,
and
a few times in a “Where-the-Hell-am-I” mode.
My intentions to get up were prompted by the arrival of 
. But at least I got up today without falling back down again. That was pleasing. I pressed the ‘Booster button’ on the meter and sat at the computer for a further hour or so. hoping the water would heat up.
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I replied to an email from Jenny, then went to check the heat of the water from the tap. It was not exactly hot, so I had to boil a kettle of water for shaving. Sorry that I bothered you now. I made a terrible job of shaving. Not realising until after I washed & brushed up. How I didn’t notice before, I don’t know. A check on my Bic razors revealed they needed dishing and new ones using, but I didn’t do either. They were clogged up.
Then I had an incident with the toothbrush that, if filmed, would have been a prime recording worthy of being sent to You’ve Been Framed. I leaned to pick up the toothbrush, with the toothpaste in my other hand.
Bear in mind, this all happened in about 12 seconds. The brush shot out of my hand and hit the wall. bounced back shooting by me, rebounded off of the top tray, I managed to grab it, and dropped it straight away, and it fell into the WC.
While I was smiling at this, I realised that during the battle to control and retrieve the toothbrush, I’d squashed the toothpaste from the tube. You would not believe how much shot from the tube, spreading all over the wetroom mats, floor, sink, the WC, and down my overgenerous belly, left leg and foot, and on my testicles.
A bugger to clean up as well! Humph!
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I did my best to catch up on sleep. I actually drifted off.
For about half an hour, the Carer crept in and woke me up. This time, I literally jumped awake. Setting off, Shaking Shoulder Shirley. Carer issued the drugs, Porpain gelled the shoulder and legs. And was soon off, he was running behind, he said. I tried putting the TV on, which usually works, when I can’t get to sleep. But it was of no use; back to just dowsing and involuntarily adopted a sort of, well, a Give-It-Upperdness, and got on with creating the second Inchie Ode At I5:00hrs. I got nearer to falling asleep than I had all day, doing this. They do not flow easily when one is struggling to concentrate & has not slept for 4 days.
I paused to ask Google for advice on this.
I wrote: An 80-year-old imitation male, under stress, cannot sleep despite being tired.
SLEEP & AGEING
Insomnia is a common sleep disorder, characterised by a persistent difficulty falling to or remaining asleep, despite the opportunity to do so. People with insomnia also experience excessive daytime sleepiness and other cognitive impairments while they are awake that directly stem from sleep loss. People may have sleep-onset insomnia, which causes difficulty falling asleep, or sleep maintenance insomnia, which causes difficulty staying asleep. Some people with insomnia experience sleep onset and sleep maintenance issues.
According to current estimates, 15-30% of 70-year-old and older adults live with insomnia. Older people are more susceptible. Attributed to a few different factors. Seniors are at higher risk of medical, psychiatric and neuropathological conditions. That can lead to insomnia symptoms, as well as other sleep disorders. Breathing or restless legs syndrome. Our internal circadian clocks and sleep-wake cycles can also change as we age, and these changes affect how long – and how well – we sleep.
Additionally, certain medications used to alleviate symptoms of geriatric medical conditions can, in fact, cause more sleep disturbances.
Glad I asked for advice on the problem.
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Self-faults that one has detected…
Situations that one has diffused,
One’s capabilities… now disintegrated,
Awareness of being disprivileged,
Dreams, hopes, now devastated,
The air we breathe, spiked, defiled…
Promises, compassion are disparaged,
As truth and decency are disavowed,
The poor demotivated & denigrated,
Violence, wars, Oligarchs delighted…
The balloon-of-hope is now deflated,
Death disregarded, water disconnected,
Innocents dehydrated, decapitated,
The world has never been so divided,
Commoners lives & deaths disacknowledged,
Lifetimes of pain for the disadvantaged,
Millions of colaterally-damaged, destituted,
Our new HMG has already disintegrated,
Sadly, these facts do not deprehend!
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Ejaz got the medications sorted out, foamed and creamed the toes and ankles, and again, they seemed better than the day before. But not the right leg, that seems to have accrued the oddest-looking batch of new marks, scars, spots and pimples. Almost artistic, really. Hahaha! I think the yellow streaks down the leg were due to my leaving the flash on for Kodak Tim 2. Ejaz told me that the new Carer time will be increased. But I’d forgotten the
day he gave me. I’ll check later. As he trotted off, a food delivery arrived. Ejaz took the bags through to the kitchen, then the lad had to fly. Bless him.
I got on the computer to find the meal shot for last night… well, this morning had not been added, so here it is.
I thought I heard something drop from the kitchen, and went in to investigate. All seemed okay, and I got Kodak Tim-2 again and took some snaps of the view on offer from the kitchenette window. I think I made another error with the last one. It came out, as you can see, totally different to the first two. Part of the mysteries of Woodthorpe Courts hobgoblins, spectres, gnomai, phantasms, grotesque succubae, ectoplasms, Whoopsiedangleplops, ailments, extraterrestrials, spirits, Accifauxpas, and the Fata Morganas strike again! I must ask Tim Price about this phenomenon with the last snap.
A while later, I nipped out to take a picture of the end car park on Citrus Way. Did okay with this effort. Caught the sun coming down from Mapperley, high above. No mudslide on the ground this morning.
Frank came up to collect the wheelchair, and I showed him what I know about it, brakes for the person in the chair and the pusher, and where they were. I checked that they were all operative, working okay.
I found a couple of many years-old photos from when I had the stroke.
Then to the Oaks Care Home for a couple of months. I took the mass of get-well cards with me, all three of them. The memories of this place linger Today. This is what put me off the idea of going into one at first. A few true tales of events; ine I cannot mention, cause after the knife attack, they deemed it best not to get the police involved.
I cracked on with the blog for a couple of hours, guzzling the mineral water like it was an elixir.
I rang Jenny to ask if I could bring the stick-on reflectors to her flat. There was something we spoke about, something else, I think. But the brain is not at its best late in the day. Jenny will be calling tomorrow with the mobile phone and said she’d collect the reflectors then.
As I went to get the kettle on for the first brew of the day, I just had to take more snaps of the clouds. This first one was as wide as I
could get on Koah Tim-2. Then I tried a close-up shot. To me, this is a paralania delight. The sun is doing its best to burst through the gap in the multi-shaded clouds. I saw a creature’s head, a whale shape and a ghost in this like photographicalisation. I’ll keep looking in case it changes again.
I tested the
I’d forgotten to vlean mt teeth. So off I went to the wet room and used the new soft toothbrush. Ejaz came and went ikn with me. We didn’t half laugh when we looked at the box. It had two brushes in it. They were for children to use. With an old-fashioned sucker on them, to stick it on Porcelain. Hehe!
Boy, the clouds are getting scary in a way.
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ch off, and visited the Porcelain Throne. No torpedoes this morning.
took it to Dilan, I saw there were only three tablets in the box. I asked if we have any on order or coming that will get here before I run out of the second most important of my medications. He did not know. He rang someone but did not say who, and said, “Well, you’ve got three days yet.” I went on my NHS App, but each time it was not used, three minutes the first one, I had to go throughthe bother of logging on again, getting a code via Email, inputting it into the app, and three minutes of searching to try and find details of my prescriptions, I was blocked again and had to go through the procedure for a third time. I tried a fourth time. Found the prescriptions and checked on the Bisoprolol name to order it. Then had to fill in why I was making the request. As I was typing in, only three tablets left, I was blocked yet again. I gave up, not knowing whether my request had gone through.
en me do it.
I did take a photo of the view through the kitchenette window. Seeing it now, not too bad a one.
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Whoopsiedangleplops, Accifauxpas, Errors, Dark, Dank Depression Darius,
kitchen, I saw that the tap was not running. I looked up at the ceiling for signs of incoming water, but there were none. Then the smell hit me, and I felt giddy. I realised then that it was bleach. I looked at where I’d left the 5-litre container of thick bleach, seeing it on the floor, burst open. I thought casually as I recalled then, ‘Well, that’s me in the shit – Again!’
Back to the kitchen and spread some more paper towels to help soak up some of the bleach, left it for a few minutes, then went back to gather what I could into waste bags.
r from the sink to the bucket. The smell got to me again, and I kept feeling a bit giddy. I did this six times in all. I had opened the windows. This snap on the right was how it looked on the fifth attempt. I was in a lot of pain by then. Back, shoulder and a new bruise on my head. As I collected the last of what I could, I had to leave the areas between the cupboards,
the stove, and the fridge; it was just too painful to get down that far.
agoule, all waste-shutting with a few words RIP style proffered as I sent them 12 stories down in the chute, to the big bins below.
r myself, maybe. There was certainly an inkling of self-sympathy lurking in my mind.
cked off at the same time.
Ejaz took a snap of the little bruise on my head for his records at ICC. Then he made some instant mash, cheese with ketchup and sausage for my meal. Not wanting me to get up from the c1966, £300 Oxfam charity shop-bought, wincingly grotty, beige-coloured, crumb-covered from my nocturnal nibblings, itch-making, uncomfortable, positively unhealthy, and dangerous, no longer operational, virus-breeding, easy-to-fall-out-of, Catheter-tube-trapping recliner. He even suggested I don’t move into the bed, rather stay where I am, the effort of climbing into bed he feared would set off the othe
r ailments.
his efforts?
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After taking these two, I drifted off to sleep for four hours. Total amassed overnight and this morning, making a total of 18 hours in the Land-of-Nod.
Afternoon rain
The smoked sausages proved too
Pleased for once with the result.
Before getting my head down after washing the meal things, I gave each of the broken, cracked, chipped, loose and painful teggies a squirt of the toothache spray. Then I had a thought.
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Afternoon Delight.
A little later…
Sunset, Gorgeous!
Zoomed in a bit…
And another…
Then right out.
The third attempt produced this

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Oh, dear, I’d left the hot water tap running! I turned it off and needed to visit the. Boy, was that another Trotsky Terence messy, gooey, yet sticky affair. Yes, it was.
take a snap of the evening sun on its way down from the open window.
Thanks to Jenny & Frank.
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physically, this morning. Confusion Konrad had a grip on me. However, despite these things, I started the day and within 10 minutes of using the Porcelain Throne, guess who visited me? Yes, it was good old, much missed, and very welcome
Off to get the kettle on for a brew of Typhoo. I took a snap from the kitchen. Is that the moon or a light at the back? I’ll try to get another tomorrow.
Warfarin is taken at teatime or in the evening. Nice that my “Baby-Princess” Carer had recognised it was missing. Medications were given, and she applied Phorpain gel to my knees. Oh, and my lower back.
I tried the Doctor’s surgery first. This first call was answered by a Robot-AI. Telling me I was being transferred to “Our Customer Navigator. Beep-beep. Then I was connected to another Robot-AI. Telling me I had to pick a number to press; Press 1: If you are bleeding heavily or have chest pains, ring off and dial 999. Press 2: If your call is about prescriptions. Press Three; I couldn’t make out what the AI said on this one. But as I needed to know my current Warfarin doses, surely linked to prescriptions? I pressed 2 and got through to a third Robot-AI. “We do not accept prescription requests by telephone, Email, and started to tell me the most convoluted email address I’ve ever heard. Obviously, I could not keep up with what the electroid was blurting out at a rapid pace – so I rang off, pissed-off!

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Morrison order.
Moved them into the kitchen.
Treats!
Favourites.
Fridge loaded.
Morning shot, I think.
Evening shot, I think.
Just a guess at this rating.
Cheesey cobs. cheesey wriggles, and some iced bread rolls. I tried to gain access to my vacant memory void, to work out when and why.
Come to think of it, I may have got the delivery days wrong, sort of back to way, on the wrong days. They may have been the other way around. Or, not.
Topped up with waters of various types. It’s costly having to keep swigging a minimum of three litres every day to keep the bladder working.
Meat pies with shortcrust and puff pastry tops. Polish cooked smoked ham, Nurses drinkies, and some bacon bits, erm… lardons they are called.
Blimus, I’ve got the fridge and freezer crammed full again. But of course, the social lady promised me help with this problem. Also, with the finances, when I get home from the hospital. Assured me of help with the ‘spent a fortune’ on wheelchairs… getting them appropriately fitted and safe to use. 
