Saturday and I wake up to my partner sipping coffee and offering me one. We sit and sip coffee knowing we are going into town. My partner gets up to go to the Chemists to get some stuff including my prescription. Its injection day on Monday. While my partner goes out I start the bacon sandwiches and coffee. As soon as we have eaten we get ready and then drive into town. The mission is to find knitting patterns for baby clothes and of course wool and pins.

In town we park up and head for Lewis’s where we find the knitting and sewing department. We peruse the pattern books, rummage through wool options and look for appropriate pins. It was fruitless. The patterns were insipid, the wools limited and there were no 4mm pins. There was a half hearted option but in the end we walked away and headed for the specialist shop tucked away in the alleys of Leicester city centre. We found the shop and instantly found patterns, wool and the right size pins. The materials were bought and we headed to nearby Italian café/ delicatessen. What a find the place is. It is full of traditional Italian food. We order coffee and tubular pastries filled with flavoured cream. I choose the pistachio flavoured one, which turns out to be delicious. I shall return to sample the whole range.

I dive my partner and home and catch up with my social media messages. After yesterday a friend and I share snowdrop pictures inspired by the ones we saw at Calke Abbey yesterday.

I also find a letter from a friend. It is a very unexpected letter as it is a response to one of the poems that I put on the blog. I read it and I’m taken aback. It is the first time anyone has responded to any of my blog poems with such a strong response. It is a jolt to my system and makes me think that I should renew my efforts to properly publish some of my poetry. The teem to watch the new six nations rugby matches is almost come around so I change into my training kit while my partner cleans her car. The rugby is good and a real pleasure. At the end of the game I dash off to the garage and row for half an hour having upped the resistance level a notch to make sure I work harder.

At the end of the session I head back to the sofa and record the session and then watch England lose the Calcutta Cup. It was an excellent game at the end of which my partner and decide on Indian take away for the evening meal. I change out of my kit and wait for the food to arrive. When it does my partner and I sit down to eat. So we are into the evening and there is a different feel to the evening. As I start to draft the blog I am accompanied by the click of knitting needles. New baby clothes are under way. The evening continues with reading until its time for the football highlights, night meds and bed.