Monday and I wake early to a sunny day. My partner is up and on her way out to work leaving me to take my vitals and then get up lazily. The builder badgers have arrived and are soon into full on digging up the front drive. I make them coffee and make bloke type chat, you know the sort of thing, “how are you sleeping”, “would you like some camomile tea”, “did yo watch Eurovision?”, to which they respond “that would be nice and I was pleased Nimo won”. I watch one of the them cut through the tarmac on the drive with an absolute beast of a machine and think “that will ruin his nail job”. So a real blokey start to the day.

Back indoors I put in my earbuds to protect my ears from the destruction going on outside and make breakfast. I have gone back to having muesli, yoghurt and honey for breakfast, it seems to be a better option than toast and other options. The badgers busily dig as I watch them from the lounge and chat to my eldest daughter. As the noise of the badger burrowing gets louder my daughter retreats to the back room and I turn up the volume of my ear buds and start a to relook at the first edit of the Herod’s Children Crumulent Colletion (HCCC). With that done I start the days blog. I have not got much, if anything on my days to do list so I expect to have a slow reading and writing day.

All the while the drive way becomes more and more like the Somme, boy do these badgers know how to dig. By lunchtime it looks like nothing will ever be able to be made good again.

After lunch I get on with updating my poems. I have two or three that need to be put on file and are the start of what will be the third in the series of The Cancer Years collections. As I am transcribing two poems the head badger draws my attention. He asks me if I knew I had a manhole. I tell him there is one down the side of the house to which he responds “no not that one”. It appears there should have been a proper manhole cover over it but who ever put it in just put a concrete slab over it. I am as surprised as he was at the find. We then do man talk over a hole to consider its state and what corrective action is required and how it can be done. We reach a solution and a manly understanding. The badgers have also found that the front drive Tarmacing has been done over soil, which means another spoil heap needing to be moved before the drive foundation materials can be laid down.

So its back to some editing and updating the blog. Here is a new short poem.

388 
Like a dog in a new basket
I circle to get comfort,
sniffing the new scents
and being unsure. 
Like any hound I want food,
not scraps of life,
but meaty on the bone sustenance,
the stuff of vigour. 

There you go a short one that just picks up the need to feed on things that will keep me healthy and vigorous. The builder badgers leave quite early for them as they need the big lorry to come and move the spoil heap they had created. I try to rest until my partner returns from work followed shortly by an Amazon delivery. I was expecting an order but I was not expecting a book. To my surprise and delight a friend has sent me a book, one I had no awareness of at all, but it looks intriguing. So I now have a small pile of books to read, which will take me through the next few days.

My evening is filled with laptop admin and a film, Cold Pursuit (I wouldn’t bother) a Liam Nelson nonsense film. I work towards taking my night meds and getting myself to bed. Tomorrow is a big day in terms of how the badger project goes, if all goes to plan it means all the clearing will be done and I will begin to see the final shape of what it is going to look like when completed. It is also a potentially important day for my son in Stockholm who has been told to expect a letter informing him as to whether or not he has been granted residency status in Sweden. His citizenship application depends on getting residency so its a big deal. Fingers crossed. Ticking away in the background is my waiting for the Americans to respond to my edit of the first draft of Herod’s Children Crumulent Collection (HCCC).