Wednesday the 3rd of May, the third day in Sparta, that state of mind that is battle before the real fight of Radiotherapy. It is the assembling the resources and the troops before the big push, should it come. So I am awake at 8 o’clock and so I read Sophie’s World for an hour before getting up for breakfast. By the time I am up the house is permeated by the sound of work voices so I down my muesli and meds and go to the gym, collecting two exciting parcels from the postman on my way out. I sneak a quick look at the contents and find they are both the ice hockey jerseys I am expecting.

The gym is a bit thin on the ground as I buy my bottle of water to take to the gum floor with me. £1.86 for a large bottle of water, that won’t happen again, its time to reclaim my water bottle from the depths of the kitchen cupboards. I go to the gym floor and find all the cross trainers taken so I bide my time and quite soon one becomes available. I hop on board and set myself up for an hours session. I’m feeling irritated as I have the misfortune to be next to a mouthy, loud, “in’t bro” arsehole on his phone while pretending to train. I crank up Rammstein, remind myself that the arsehole will go away and breath deeply trying to ignore the intolerant urge to punch the arsehole into next week. As foretold by reasonable rational me the arsehole does eventually wander off and I continue my session in blissful peace. I do a 65 minute session, sipping water as I go. The session turns out ok, I burn 600+ calories and go 6+ kilometres. By the time I get to the end I am knackered and walk the gym floor to cool down.

I shower slowly and make my way to the lounge to drink coffee and eat an egg and bacon roll while reading more of Sophie’s World. The book is edging its way through philosophy’s history and I have managed to get as far as Locke. Its been a good refresher to date and of course raises interesting questions about the nature of mortality and what being a person actually means, which at this moment in time feels more than pertinent. Woven into the story is a mystery concerning the characters in the book who are teaching and learning the philosophy through discussion and dialogue. I’m about half way through and I am interested to see what the book has to say about my pet like, existentialism. By the end of two cups of coffee I am read to return home.

Once home I am of course immediately trying on my new ice hockey jerseys. There are two kinds of jersey, (pay attention Oswald minor at the back), the first is the heavy winter jersey clearly meant for the winter season and then there is the light mesh versions that are either summer season wear or light training versions. The mesh ones are excellent summer wear and my two news ones are of this type. One of them has come from the Ukraine, while the German one has come from a chap in England.

I of course keep one of them on while I sort out my training kit, hang out my towel and then record todays gym session and food in my diet and exercise journal. With the world sorted I take to drafting the blog until my partner returns from seeing her mother. When I log into my blog web site I always check the numbers of people who have visited the site and the number of visits. I was taken aback to see that according to the stats monitor that there had been 437 visitors and 836 visits today so far. I checked the identities of the visitors and found very few repeat people, or at least addresses. I’ve no idea what this is about but occasionally I will get an unexpected spike in the figures and I suspect that there is a technical glitch that lets a lot of SPAM or something like through to the site. Either that or it is counting hits for some one else’s site and adding them to mine. Hey Ho! as much as I would like to think that as many people might be interested I think it highly unlikely that this is anywhere near the reality.

I move into the evening aware that I have very few spoons, if any, left for the rest of the day, which means I am likely to watch the end of Murder in the First Series 3, read and then go to bed, rattling with night meds and smoother than a fresh jar o’ Skippy. Full marks to anyone who knows where those song lyrics come from.