Its a Friday when I wake up and about 9 o’clock. I reach for my phone and check messages and emails before going downstairs to breakfast. I make my now usual cholesterol friendly muesli and decaf coffee, which I get down me as I watch the tail end of some appalling morning breakfast show. A combination of fear features, a sort your going to be blagged, duped or scammed before you die of todays medical condition (so get yourself checked) and on the bright side here in the cooking section is how to prepare cheap wholesome food which will stave of the effects of the dire medical condition we have just made you fear. To round this off some dancer encourages me to flail around doing movements to keep me fit. I am tempted to say that having induced an existential crisis in me, what the fuck for? I take my morning meds and do my vitals, all good there I seem to have survived the TV fear attack.

I turn the TV off and turn my attention to the task of removing all the DVDs from their boxes and re packaging them in a nice neat wallet case that my partner has bought for the job. It means we can get another cardboard box out of the house and off the floor. So I set about the task with zeal as this sort of organisation appeals to me. In the old days when I was stupid and thought such things mattered, I would have put them in to some sort of order, but bugger that life is too short. So I beaver away until I get to a natural end point. I order a second case to house the box sets, that’s my only concession to organisation.

I am really chuffed with the out come. By the end of the weekend all of our DVD collection will be in two cases and the cardboard box and plastic cases recycled. The morning has gone, its lunch time and my partner makes me salmon on olive bread with apple, which I eat on the patio. I think its suitably cholesterol friendly for a Friday. I slug about a bit post lunch until the post man delivers a new book from a friend. My friend is one, if not the most well read person I know and on occasions when I face a reading dessert sends me a book to feed me. So far the food has been delicious and introduced me to many new authors that I would not have found on my own. My problem is that if I like the author I tend to then read everything by them. COVID was an expensive time in this regard.

I begin to nibble at the new book and then a friend rings me. She has been trying to get me over the last couple of day so this is third time lucky. We have a lot to catch upon, like holidays and the cost of trainers per wear and other every day things. There is good news as she now has a return to work date after so many months of battling with long COVID. It will be a sensibly graded return to work to continue the process of recovery, there is no magic switch but this is really good news. We finish the call as she goes off to collect one of her daughters and I change into my training kit. I am hot and I can feel myself running out of spoons after this mornings DVD marathon but I am inspired. I get into the garage and set the rower up for an hour session, first time I have done that for a while. Its 23 degrees in the garage so I set off slowly and maintain a regular rhythm, this is not a day for heroics. I make it, the full hour, despite the fact that the overall distance and calories are below my normal for an hour I am pleased to have completed it.

It is hot and I am dripping with sweat so I head for the freezer and get an iced lolly to suck as I desperately try to cool down. As I do this I record the session in my journal. Once suitably I change into a kimono and redo my vitals, all good again except an as to be expected elevation of my heart rate. The evening begins with drafting the blog which takes a while and it’s soon gone seven o’clock. No tea yet as its hot and no one is inclined to cook but we will get there. Tonight I know what shall be watching on TV and that’s the opening match of the Rugby World Cup, France v New Zealand, should be a cracking game. After that who knows apart form the fact that I shall take my night meds and wonder off to bed in the hope that my training efforts today will mitigate against the side effects of the chemo.