Wednesday and I wake early and before I can sink into my usual rousing routine I find myself in the shower. It’s a powerful rain shower and very warming. It’s one of the upgrades to the apartment along with it being a walk in shower. It makes me wonder if we should take to bath out at home and install a walk in one. Once showered I make warm drinks for my partner and I and return to bed.

Breakfast is eaten to the accompaniment of the sea rolling the giant pebbles around just across from our apartment. my partner re-plaits my hair in readiness for our first walk into the village.

After I am braided we go for a walk to the post box and then to the chemist, I am desperate for a nail file and clippers as I have split a nail and its really irritating as I keep catching it on my clothes. I am lucky and find all I need and we are able to move on to the next shop to get the odds and ends we need to survive, like dishwasher tablets. On the way back there were the most enormous lilies in a front garden, I’d not seen them so large before and assume the southerly climate favours them.

The shopping is dropped into the apartment as is two layers of clothing, the sun is out and its quite warm, With the adjustments made we head for the café round the corner for raspberry lemonade and a massive warm fruit scone with all the trimmings. Its a real treat and I am fascinated by the local people who are coming in and out. Back at the apartment I do the days crosswords, while my partner reads on the patio in the sunshine. So time passes until it’s time for the ice cream walk. Donning the most comfortable shoes I can manage my partner and I walk to the promenade and look out over the sea under a blue sky.

We walk the back way to overlook the back of the pebble ridge and on the way discover an extraordinary facility, a self service dog wash: I kid you not! How a dog manages it is beyond me but there it was as bold as brass and here is the picture to prove it.

Can only be a matter of time before someone tries to use it on a child. My partner and i have done the required time out and about and head for the ice cream van back along the sea front and there we sit 99’s in hand and and just watch the sea. It’s looking bluer today and I reflect that, unlike furniture and other objects I cannot grasp its shape or weight, I find it difficult to get a “sense” of it and I find that mildly disturbing. We watch it for a long time.

Once again back at the apartment I settle down and send birthday flowers to my sons partner in Stockholm and then I set about drafting the blog, while my partner makes tea for us, pate to start and pasta to finish. And so the evening begins and for the first time in days I can begin to feel a poem sloshing about inside me, not formed yet but gradually forming adn incubating. Maybe tonight, maybe tomorrow, maybe never, I just have to wait and see. In the mean time I shall eat, read, watch TV until its time for my meds and all the other bedtime rituals that I am locked into at the moment as part of my war on the cancer and the other minor skirmishes around my body.

Tuesday and the second full day on holiday, I wake up in the strange bed listening to the quiet. I seem to have slept okay and get up to make warm drinks for myself and my partner. We chat and discuss the experience of having nothing to do and dreams. Eventually we get up and go for breakfast at the little café round the corner, which being out of season I thought might be empty but it is almost full. We get a small table and peruse the menu. I go for hot chocolate and the double breakfast. This is a real treat as people come and go. It’s nice to just sit and chat over a meal. With breakfast done we return to the apartment to rest. I write postcards while my partner reads and knits. Outside people are walking by huddled up against the chill breeze.

Early after noon and are out again, this time to post postcards and to have an ice cream as a reward. The post box is traditionally yarn bombed and this time is no exception. There is an Easter version of the Wallace and Gromit penguin atop the box. Its a real splash of colour and fun.

Having posted the cards we wander off to walk the promenade towards the haunted house at the end of the beach huts, stopping for breath a couple of times. The “haunted house” is a big old cliff top house that has fallen into to disrepair but as we approach we notice a van and a bloke loading a stained glass window casement into his van. Apparently there is a plan to save the house and work has started including saving the stained glass windows in the front.

I and my partner walk back to a well earned 99 ice ream, which we eat sitting on a bench looking out to sea. Its a chilly breeze so we return to the apartment where I write more postcards and my partner reads before we watch the last episode of Protection. Tea is a bit of a challenge as the controls on the hob are not self explanatory so there is a bit of delay during which I draft the blog and the sun goes down.

Tea is eaten and my partner and I settle down to an evening of reading, knitting and TV before I once again go through my nightly rituals of medications, hand splint and massage. All day I have been wondering if inspiration will strike and I will have a suitable seaside inspired poem to share but so far there has been nothing and no signs of any inner bubbling that I am aware of, I guess I shall just have to wait.

Glorious Monday, I’m on holiday and I’ve slept well in a strange bed having retired early last night. I get up early and leave my partner to sleep as long as she wants and begin to catch up with the last three days on the blog. There is a lot to get through and it take a while to put it together. My partner gets up and feeds me marmalade toast, and then potters about while I finally finish drafting and publish the blog. With that out of the way its time to go and see the sea and do a bit of shopping.

My partner and I raid Tesco’s and retreat to the apartment where we squirrel away our food in the giant SMEG fridge and then sit on our patio doing the crosswords and reading the paper, eventually indulging in sandwiches for lunch knowing that there is a walk to be had if there is to be ice cream from the van. Our walk is not a long one but takes us to the end of path to the end of Westwood Ho! We saunter back to the ice ream van and order our 99’s and then sit and eat them in glorious sunshine and watch the sea. It feels like we are truly arriving for our break. With ice cream done there is a short walk to the small row of shops that constitute the shopping opportunity overlooking the “bowling green” to the sea. We buy postcards and soap and then return to the apartment to settle down to a quiet time where my partner start to knit a jacket for the youngest grandson and I check emails and star todays blog. And so we drift with our patio door open with the sun streaming in and the sounds of passers by all under pinned by the sound of the sea, rolling, and above it gulls giving an occasional screech.

Its soon time to think food and the coming England football match tonight. Tonight the team has to overcome Latvia. It will be a poor show if they cannot stick a few past the Latvians. If they don’t I am not sure the new German manager of England will even make it to the World Cup.

Friday I wake up and find that I am still fight the battle of a bad gut and a sore and still purple bruised set of toes, so once again I spend the day with my foot being iced and practising the latrine two step to the loo. It does not sound much of an existence but oddly as I laze around craving plain and binding food, I update information into my new daily running journal and acquire a new ISA. The later at the suggestion of my partner who shrewdly pointed out that 4.25% is a lot more then 2.2%. The logic is in the arithmetic the anxiety is in the not quite believing that all this magic can be done on a Smart phone, but it was and magically a new entry appeared on my banking page.

I was able to do some holiday planning with the aid of my new note making App that has a list creation function on it. I just type in random stuff and press a button and it gets turned into a “to do” list. Its brilliant if only I had had this when I was working and being a manager, life would have been even easier. Any way the day passed with odd moments of joy amongst the other stuff, like my denim design crocs arriving, which I hope my bruised toes will appreciate in due course. The good news is that they did.

The evening coms around and there is a football match to watch, England in the World Cup qualifiers against the might of Albania. England manage a professional but deeply boring 2-0 win, and with that I take my meds, give my hand operation scars on last Nivea creaming of the day, don my finger splint and magic gel dressing and go to bed, hoping that my felling of physical emptiness is a signal that my gut is finally settling down.

Saturday arrives and today is supposed to be day out at the States of Independence literary festival at the local university. I make a tentative start to the day by taking my vitals ( all good) and getting myself down to the local pharmacy to try and collect the medications I tried to order on Wednesday. The timing is all a bit tight. As I feared my prescription is not ready but when I explain my situation of needing my injection to come back to on Monday week, as I am going away for a week, they check to see if they can order it for today. They come back and tell me it out of stock, the supplier does not have any. This is bad news as it is a medication that comes in from the EU and is my mainstay cancer drug. I have at least one of these injections stashed away so I will be alright on the Monday I need it, but it triggers fears about the supply chain not working. Its an anxiety I’ve not had before but I am aware that other people with similar conditions have experienced difficulties getting their medications when this disruption happens.

I return home empty handed and eat toast and marmalade determined not to panic. My partner and I get ready and we drive into town to the States of Independence book festival at the university.

We arrive, me with a bag tight with copies of my poetry collections, well you never know. We tick ourselves in and begin to roam the stalls of book sellers, self publishers and publishers. I meet someone I know from the poetry stanza who is looking after the local writers group stall. To start with I am a bit bemused it feels like a craft fair but with books, it could easily be a a 3P affair, (Pick up, Put down and Piss off) experience but I get talking to some people about what they do and I find some that do what the Americans do for me. I show them my books like a child going “look what I’ve done” and they say they can do what the Americans have been doing for me but a lot cheaper. I am interested and take their details. They suggested an anthology, which is an intriguing though but at the moment I think I just want to test the water with a new Cancer Years collection.

Time for the first presentation of the day and my partner and I choose to go and see one about how the University writers course had researched, written and illustrated a graphic novel of seven stories based on Leicester folklore. It had students and professionals there talking about their roles and a snippet of video explaining the project. There was some interesting bits in it, but I am not sure how taking a Indian folk tale and translating it into a modern day story set in Leicester so as to reflect the nature of the city is quite reflecting the folklore of Leicester rather than creating new stuff, but there you go that me.

Our next session saw us in the headline session with Anthony Joseph being interviewed and reading his poetry. He was very entertaining and interesting having been a musician first then a poet and also a novelist. My partners comment was that she could listen to his voice all day and it is true he had a rich and relaxed voice. It was a good session, its always good to see poetry being brought alive by being read, especially by some one who has a good “voice”. When I Look a the notes I made (yes of course I did!) I note that I have written “What a fucking necklace! This refers to the huge bead affair that was hung around her neck. Spectacular is the word.

After a lunch time sandwich we go back to the festival and attend another session by a block called Rob Duncan who has aphantasia, not that being aphantasic is something that you have more something you are. Aphantasia is the inability to form mental images of objects that are not present. Rob Duncan is a writer so he did a work shop on how he creates a visual world for people when he cannot create a visual world of his own . In effect he creates things for people to see in the their “minds eye” when he does not have one. Too this end he has developed “rules”, more like guidelines on how to construct a description that will do the job, understanding that everyone who reads it will create their own “minds eye” version of it. He got us all to pick up a key from the desk and then to apply the formulae to it and some brave people read what they had written. You apparently give a general location (environmental context) and then add a small visual detail followed by another sense fact in the environment. It was quite fun to do as we were encouraged to expand it if we had time. (it was a very short exercise). Here is mine:

“In the nursery on a winter’s day, dim and baby powder smelling, the key protruded from the box of magic treats. Only the nanny, tall and bleach clean, was allowed to dispense the treats. A vile tasting potion to keep a tiny soul alive.”

Having seen the session through we had a quick break and moved onto the Open Mike session where people had pre booked to read a poem or two. We sat and listened to several people read their poems, some good, some indifferent and some rathe lovely. Mostly connecting the poet to the work, so the really creepy guy who read his poem about a breast pump was put down as just strange. The Mexican woman who write a cautionary poem about her kind were out and about and not to be messed with was good. When all the signed up poets had read a couple of extras got up. I could not resist despite being nervous. I had been struck by how flat or monotone most of the reading had been so I decided that I would go with my ye ha poem “God bless America” a celebration poem of getting my first collection published in the USA. I hope I was suitably energetic and ye ha, but it only struck me half way through that there might be a sense of not wishing to bless America in the room with this audience. I was clapped politely . With the fun over we returned home.

It had been a tiring but interesting experience and I just sat in front of the TV and watched rugby and football. The evening passed with watching more stuff before going through my night rituals, taking my meds and going to bed quite early.

Sunday, I am up and finishing packing for the holiday. Last minute checks done and odd things stuffed into nooks and crannies of various bags. The car gets packed and then that point of no return comes. My partner and I get in an we are off. I know this route, M69, M6, M42, M5, J27 follow the sign posts to Barnstable, then Bideford and finally Westwood Ho! Of course I use my phone maps for the last bit but we arrive via one pee stop and a sandwich at about twenty to four. The car is unpacked and I am knackered. My first thought is to see if the ice ream van adn the ocean are still here as I remember them from last time. They are!

My partner and I are both hungry so my Country Kitchen to see if it is open, it is and we book a table for 6 o’clock. It is literally less than five minutes walk away so we arrive, check in and are shown to our table by a sweet and diminutive waitress. No. 19 our table. The menu is explained to us, we order small glasses of wine and a start after which we will attack the carvery. The starter is huge, pate, so we do as we were in structed and have a rest before getting to the multi-meated carvery. I indulge in roast beef and all the trimmings with additional roast spuds and mustard. It is what my old grandfather would have called a proper “blow out”. It was was just what I an my partner needed after the journey. We waddled back to the apartment absolutely podged. However once the jeans were off and we had watched an episode of Protection there was room for a coffee and a few After Eight mints. Tiredness won in the end, it always does, and my partner went to bed followed shortly by me after I had dug out all the things I need to go to bed with. So with my meds in me and my finger splint strapped to my hand I finally flop in to a strange bed with the sound of the sea somewhere in my ears.

Thursday morning and I just want to cover my head and sleep after a night doing the larine two step. I tentatively look in my energy cutlery draw and find a single spoon. I try to sleep but fail and eventually my partner brings me hot water, which I sip before doing my vitals, which to my surprise are okay. In an effort to try and capture what’s going on I write something on my new notes App in the hope that it will let me move on this morning.

439
When I'd rather be asleep 
than awake, I know I'm in trouble.
When all the niggly bits
out weigh the rest ,
then it's desperate.
When nothing is a crisis
but everything needs tending 
in an endless round of care
that's when I hanker
after sleep.
Its the insidious side
of cancer warfare,
chipped at slowly,
like Chinese torture,
every drop washing away energy,
a man under erosion. 
I crave a kindness or two
just to know  that 
someone sees it
before I pull the covers 
over my head.

                                                                    439 20-03-2025

I finally get up make toast (its going to be a toast day) and take my morning meds with the additional vitamin D as a treat on this Spring equinox day. Retrieving my ice pack from the freezer I strap it onto my bruised toes and begin to draft the days blog. Already I am tired and I am supposed to be seeing Paul Muldoon at the university tonight. I even bought some of his poetry to read to prepare but I’m not hopeful of stretching my one spoon that far, although I know that other poets from my Stanza group will be going. Its 11:20am and I am already fatigued.

All day I rest trying to recover from a grim stomach upset. There is a call from a friend, which was really good. Hearing someone and talking with some one out side the household is a real pleasure. I watch Under Milkwood and in the evening the last episodes of Adolescence. By bed time I am exhausted, I take my night meds and a Dioralyte with a couple of plain biscuits and head for bed. Did I mention I am exhausted.

Its a Wednesday I realise as I wake up at 7:30 and a loud voice in my head shouts “Bin day” and my outside mouth shouts “bollocks” as I realise I did not put the bin out last night. So its into a set of joggers and an ice hockey jersey to pad downstairs and put the bin out. While I am up I make warm drinks for my partner and I and return to bed. My bruised toes are a nice colour from yesterdays mishap but mobile. My partner goes of to see her mother with her brother while I breakfast and construct my “to do” list for the day. Its not ambitious and is mainly rest and ICEing my bruised foot. So I settle into the morning having taken my morning meds and eaten breakfast. Doing much with a ice an ice pack strapped to your foot is a bit inhibiting but by the time early afternoon comes round I have achieved quite a lot. All the door hinges in the house now run squeak less, the Rentokil insurance is paid, I’ve transferred information from my old journal to my new one and I have opened an ISA. The last being the scariest but it all seems to have gone magically well. My drugs are ordered and now I am free to give my hand attention and do the physio on it that is required at regular intervals. I also get a surprising quick response from the National Theatre at home website who I contacted about them taking for an order twice. They were very apologetic and have issued a refund. That was a result I was not expecting.

I eat lunch with my partner, after which I start to draft the blog while my partner cleans her car. I need to crack on with my physio and start to write my holiday list of things to do. I can feel myself getting short of spoons (energy) , I guess I jumped the gun this morning expending so much early energy putting the bins out. My GP keeps sending me messages about having statins and I keep ignoring him. I want no more medications than I am on thank you very much, I have enough trouble doing what I need to do to minimise the side effects of the stuff I am on without having to del with more crap going into my body. I am stable at the moment and apart from the odd bruise I am fine, I just get tired easily. Being handily retired means I can nap or rest when I need to.

The evening arrives and finds me feeling decidedly “off”. My gut is bad but I continue to regularly ICE my bruised toes and do the physio routine for the scar management on my hand. After a couple of episodes of Adolescence and a dumb film I call it quits as I have no more energy left, I take my meds and go to bed hopping to sleep quickly and deeply.

Tuesday, I think I start like this to remind me of the things I do on a Tuesdays, like today Tesco will deliver and the bins go out. However it is Tuesday and s usual I check my vitals and my messages. I send some as well as today is a friends birthday. My partner has already been to the shop, had breakfast and is reading a newspaper before going to an old colleagues leaving lunch. I write a poem on my new Notes App after a chat with my partner. Not like me to write early in the morning but it’s happened a couple of times recently.

438
I am like a drummer,
Someone who hangs around with 
musicians.
I just loiter around poets,
with their proper tunes and rhymes
and scribble soul notes,
random stuff with no effort to attend
to the niceties of metre or flow,
or whatever real poets do.
I listen to them in process,
I hear the nuances striven for,
the analysis of words and meaning,
and I realise I’m not even like a 
drummer, who at least keep time.
I guess I am a groupie,
because words touch me
and I am in awe of those that sculpt
them in forms that move me
to dance, laugh, sing and cry
inside my head 
or on my face.
Perhaps I’m just a lazy bastard
that just can’t be arsed,
fearing failure if I really tried,
like the dyslexic infant
who hid, played truant
and eventually escaped 
by ignoring the rules.
So now like that chid
I press my nose against a window
and wonder at the marvels
in the poetry shop window
knowing they are not for me
but for clever kids. 
This pen this ink refuses to lay down
and here I am scribbling on scraps
still looking for something
that says this is how my world is. 
Can you hear the word symphony
that’s playing somewhere
inside this private auditorium?
I’m neither stupid or uneducated
just put together different
with all the rough edges left
and unable to show my workings.
This pen this ink refuses to lay down. 	
									438 18-03-2025

When I do get up I find my partner reading he paper so I join her with my breakfast and my morning meds. I do the crosswords and then head for the garden with a club hammer intent on preparing the way for a new cold frame. As an initial step I propose to move a paving slab on to the lawn before putting the new incinerator on it to burn the old cold frames. I start to “walk” the paving slab to the lawn but it doesn’t want to go and trips my up with the result that one corner drops on my toes. Falling to the floor with a hearty “Fuck” I know I am going to have a bruise or two but need to crack on. As it turns out I am right about the bruise and the need to ICE it.

The incinerator is burning nicely as I demolish the old raised beds and redistribute the compost in readiness for a new cold frame. It a lovely sunny windless day and I am pleased to have made the effort when I hear some one down the road shouting about the fie and telling me to put it out. I carry one. The next thing I know is that my eldest daughter is standing at the bac door saying that a woman has been to the front door and been rude to her and is asking me to put my fire out because she does not want this woman back again. This is the first I hear about it. I am not chuffed but I am not going to pick a fight right now, I have cleared the area I need to put the cold frame in so I stop feeding the incinerator.

I clear away my tools and retreat inside just in time to meet the Amazon man delivering the new cold frame that I intend to install tomorrow. By the time my partner returns I am sitting feet up with icy chips strapped to my foot. After a chat I go for a bath to rest and see how my toes are doing. The bath is a real treat as I can sit back and listen to soft music and munch my way through a bacon sandwich. I languish until I start to reach the wrinkly stage so I get myself out and head for the recliner where I can continue to ICE my toes and start to draft the blog. I continue to ICE (Ice, Compress, and Elevate.) and blog till its time to stop and turn off my brain and watch TV.

The evening is slow and eventually after several ICEs and my night meds I head for bed to strap on my night splint. It would appear that my “frilly” bits are having a tricky time but come Sunday I head for a weeks break where I can rest by the sea.

Sunday and it is a birthday celebration day for my youngest daughter. so the household is up and around quite early including me. I check my vitals and then I am helping to do preparation and grandson entertainment. It seems the youngest grandson likes to feed the birds or at least throw bird feed around the garden. After a lunch every one is resting and we are getting ourselves up for going to feed the ducks at the local park when out of the blue my partners brother and youngest daughter arrive, so a big chunk of the family is under one roof. There is tea, play and family conversation amongst moments of quiet.

While the family gets on being family my partner and I prepare the birthday tea. Of course we invite our unexpected family so we juggle the table. With everything ready we invite every in.

Once every body has eaten all they want its time for birthday cake, singing and the blowing out of candles. These are the moments that grandparents like me really like and me in particular as many as I can manage.

There are presents and more tea and chat before the unexpected family return home and the rest of us settle into an evening of putting the grandchild to bed and then watching a film. One by one people drift off to bed at the end of a good day. I go through my night rituals and finally get to don my finger splint and magic latex.

Monday sees the household up as the youngest grandson and his parents prepare to leave for home. before they leave I take my eldest daughter to the hospital to meet a consultant who is going to provide her with the results of some tests. It turns out all of the results that he has examined do not need any from of intervention. One thing unrelated to the others can be contained with physio and lifestyle. As I drove home I get a message that my youngest grandson and his parents have broken down on the way home, so I change plans and drop my eldest daughter off at work, drive home and then with my partner drive to help the stranded family. When we get to where they are there is a handy Starbucks where we can keep the youngest grandchild warm, so we settle in until the RAC are able to repair the car. In a relatively short time the faulty ignition coil is replaced and they are able to continue on their journey home.

My partner and I return home collecting a paper on the way so that when we get home we can sit down and relax at last. The evening drifts into view and with it my partners singing lesson, during which I catch up with the blog. I am now looking forward to a chance to get back into a training routine, but looking at my diary it does not look like its going to happen for a while. I am beginning to wonder if I am on a fools errand and that a routine and regular life is not actually possible if I am relatively fit and trying to live a normal life, given that normal life is not predictable. My only constraints are my 28 day injection cycle that does affect me for two or three days and the current three month chemo cycles. Perhaps I should just allow those two as the framework and then not let myself be constrained by anything else. My problem is that I need thinking time and reaction time. It seems to me that I am trying to adjust to my partners retirement as much as she is. So its night meds, bed rituals and off to sleep, but not before the Tesco order gets finalised, just one more thing to fit in to the day.

Saturday arrives and there are things to do once my waking rituals are done. Once complete, I get up and get into my training kit and take my morning meds. Before I train I do a number of preparation chores for the visit of my youngest daughter, partner and son on her birthday tomorrow. Its mostly clearing the decks so they can stay the night without clutter around them. With things organised I go to the garage and the rower. I select a short session and get on my way. At the end of 30 minutes I am hot and sweaty having worked hard. I put the effort as I know that It will be a couple of days before I can train again.

With the session over I record it and change into what I am going to wear for the poetry stanza zoom meeting. I run off a missing poem and set the computer up for the Zoom meeting and then have a very late breakfast. When it comes logging in for the meeting I discover the speakers that I have tested will not work on Zoom so I have to rapidly change to a laptop.

When I read through the poems in preparation I was not moved, thirteen poems and not one of them grabbed me. It was to be omen for the session. All the usual people were there and the format was the same but as I listened to the group discuss and dissect the first two poems I felt like I did when I first attended a stanza meeting. The language used and the ideas and the interpretations just seemed alien to me. I felt lost and could not for the life of me understand what was going on, or the poems. As a result I just listened to the poems being read and discussed scribbling the odd note to myself. I neither read a poem for the group nor submitted a poem for the group to read. In fact I did not say a word for the whole session and logged out at the end with a sense of relief. The experience felt as if I had lost all touch with poetry, at least not the poetry of this session or the way it was processed. It begins to feel as if I have had a narrow escape, I had forgotten how alienated from the “poetry industry” I feel and I wonder if I have lost myself in something that is beyond me. These are erudite, educated and talented people who live for their poetry in the world of literature and its construction. Somehow it feels that I have lost something, I’m not sure what it is but I can’t do poetry like these people do, at least not now. Once again I feel the alien.

After the session I watch the international rugby that carries on through the evening to its conclusion of seeing the French claim the six nations championship. I draft a short blog, take my night meds and take myself to bed knowing that tomorrow I shall see my youngest grandson and youngest daughter on her birthday. What more could I want.

Thursday, I wake and once again got through my rituals. Vitals measured, meds taken and then into my training gear. Before I get stuck into the rower I putter around organising things for the coming week. Eventually I cannot put off the training off any longer, so I go to the garage and strap myself in. I decide to go for a 45 minute session. I discover that I am already tired so that the session is a real effort. Towards the end I am working really hard but I get to the 9 kilometer mark.

I record the session and them shower by which time I am desperately tired. I make lunch and then rest for while. There are few things I can do but mainly I rest. Occasionally I have days like this. By the evening all I am good for is watching football and then going through my night rituals. Mostly meds and strapping on my night splint to keep my finger straight post operation.

Friday arrives and there are things to do. This is my youngest daughters birthday and she is coming to visit with her partner and young son, so there is shopping to be done as my partner and I are going to do a traditional afternoon tea. After a brief breakfast my partner and I go off to the local monster M&S to get the goodies for the weekend. There is time for a quick snack before we return home and I start to tidy things away for the weekend but also prepare for Saturdays Poetry Stanza. I am only able to attend on Saturday because the group that I occasionally meet up with for lunch has been postponed. There are twelve new poems to be printed off and read. This preparation is a pleasure as there are always surprises in the new poems. I put them in a file and the settle down to eat tea and then catch up with drafting the blog. One of the things I did this afternoon was to equip my phone a note making App. What a revelation it is to have such a useful little App. This all came about by me wanting to capture something earlier in the day and being frustrated that I did not have anything easily available on the phone. What I wanted to capture was the thought that I was sufferings form NGS, or Nonspecific Grumpiness Syndrome, especially when experiencing MHF, Massive Hot Flush.

The evening passes with Death in Paradise and continued blog drafting until its time for my night medication and splinting up my finger, but I am taken by surprise. I get a WhatsApp from someone asking how I am and purporting to be a publisher. It must be a scam. And that is how the world is, no matter how much I’d like to think a publisher would like to publish stuff I shall block who ever this is.