Saturday and it is a slow start with a morning whiled away with some wrapping, more Christmas Admin and cleaning and “glaming” myself up for my late lunch later. I post my remaining Christmas cards and write the ones for the people I will see later. I take a long shower and when my hair is dried I ask my eldest daughter to plait my hair for me. Its becoming a tradition that when I go out somewhere that I have my hair plaited. Here is the result of todays efforts.

So once I am “glamed” up I get the car out and drive to Burton on Trent to the Whinery. The car feels skittish in this weather and I think I detect a slight slide early on in the journey. It is cold and there is still a lot of frost on the roads in the shady spots. The result is that I drive more slowly than usual and pay attention to the gear I am in. It seemed to me that others round me were doing the same. There are of course the obvious exceptions, Range Rover drivers mostly. I get to the Whinery and greet my friends and we settle down to a convivial meal and chat. We exchange cards and gifts and talk about mutual acquaintances and work of old. We of course try to include the daughter of one us who is there but being us we descend into memory lane. We breakup about an hour before the England kick off and go our different ways.

I get home and settle into watching the world cup semi final between England and France, Of course we lose because one of our star world class players is unable to get a football on target when taking a penalty. Well that’s England done and over with, its up to Morocco to disenchant the French now as it is Croatia’s job to disgruntle Argentina. Enough of football, we move onto the death fest that is Midsommer Murders. It straight to bed full of night meds as soon as the last body is accounted for. I spend some time reading Portrait of Your Ex Assembling Furniture by Nicolette Daskalakis. Its a collection of poems by a Los Angeles writer, film maker and photographer apart from also writing poetry. She comes from an interesting perspective. Sleep arrives as does oblivion, until of course I need a piss every couple of hours courtesy of my meds.

Sunday and for a Sunday I am awake early and breakfasting after a warm drink in bed. My partner is preparing for our guests this morning so chocolate cake, biscuits and mini mince pies are arranged and ready. At ten o’clock the guests arrive and we settle down to coffee and nibbles. There is covert present swapping to be done as my grand nephew still has some inkling that Santa is alive and well, even if he does accept a delivery role for other people at Christmas. We sit and catch up and talk through Christmas plans and what we have done recently. The time flies by and soon the guests are away. My partner had to start her pre hospital diet routine so we spend the afternoon preparing and diverting ourselves with Happy Valley. I draft the blog only half watching TV knowing the big event of the evening will be the Strictly semi-final. It will come and it will go and then my partner and I can get on with tomorrows business of her hospital appointment in the morning and my injection in the afternoon, that is once we have sorted the Tesco order and delivery. Life is full of interesting experiences but tomorrow’s are ones we could do without.

I forgot to mention that as per usual I weighed myself as the first thing I did. I stepped onto the scales and looked tentatively down. I am gleeful given the lean training I have done as I read 95.9 Kilos. I have at last dipped below 96 kilos and if I am focussed and keep to the Rocket plan I could dip below 95 kilos for Christmas. That would be the best present possible along with a falling PSA. The latter maybe more difficult to achieve.