Sunday and I am awake first so make the drinks for my partner and I. I weigh myself as its Sunday expecting a post holiday blob weight so I am chuffed when I come in at 97.2 kilos. Its clear the holiday walks and restraint on the food front have proved their worth. My partner and I chat for a while and then have bacon sandwiches for breakfast. We make our usual face to face call with our youngest daughter, and have the pre birth chat about appropriate visits by newly proud grandparents. So we now have a time table of sorts for the coming week and are able to be responsible grandparents. Post call my partner and I go shopping at our local garden centre, where we watch the butcher spatchcock a chicken in expert fashion. Its raining yet again and it feels like winter is coming early, ridiculous, but that’s how it feels.

Once home I settle down to watch the men’s final at Wimbledon. Its a long affair as Djokovic and Alcaraz begin to slog it out. By the time they they get to a set all I am getting “itchy” to train, I figure that the way things were going in the tennis they will still be at it buy the time I have trained. I get into my kit and go to the garage to find the display on the rower was dead. I spend time sorting out the wiring and put in new batteries and Bingo! it springs back into life. I climb on the rower and set off for my first row for what feels like a long time. It is a slow row and I am trying to be gentle with myself to start with as I dread inducing blood in my urine. I keep a regular pace and I am happy to get to the end feeling reasonably well. I’ve not smashed it out of the park but it will do.

Djokovic and Alcaraz are still slogging it out by the time I get back to the sofa to record my session. Ultimately Alcaraz wins out 3 sets to 2, which comes at a timely moment as the evening meal is ready. The family dines and we slip into the evening and I draft the blog. I am curious to see how I slip back into some sort of post holiday routine, I have letters to write, training to do and I need to keep going with my poetry project. Its a vanity project really, or at least my poetry stanza chums would say so, but it still needs me to put some work in produce a word count before I can price a manuscript to publish.