Sunny Sunday and I ‘ve had a mixed night after deciding that I was having another Uluru (bladder stone ) attack. Having gone for intervention “A” of antibiotics, no blood thinners and rest I feel initially as if I have jumped the gun. I take my vitals and they are good. When I do get up I am feeling relatively okay. While half way through my honey toasted bagel there is a ring at the door. It is a neighbour from over the back. One of our remaining fir trees has dropped a branch onto their back fence, I join my partner in the conversation and thank him for letting us know and assure him we would do something about it. No sooner had he left than the next door neighbour arrived to tell us about the garden fence work they are having done and a new shed that they are putting in. We talk about co-operative hedge maintenance as a group of three neighbours, which would be a good move going forwards. I promise to let them know the electricians number when I get a card off him tomorrow.

As soon as my neighbour has gone I grab my log saw from the garage and saw off the offending branch that had fallen over the neighbours fence. As I am doing that the garden guy arrives and gives me a hand. With that done I can feel I have been standing too long and retreat to the house. Sure enough I have my battery acid symptoms back when I go for a piss. I seems that if I spend any time on my feet my symptoms get worse. I finish my cold honied bagel breakfast and retreat to the recliner where I stare into space for a bit trying to regain balance. There are some messages from my son and friends which I reply to, apparently it is Gay Pride this month and one of my friends in York and her family have been to celebrate taking their new niece with them. my discomfort continues so I resort to taking a co-codamol, anything is better than this constant acid pain. I write a brief poem as a means of diversion and of a way of trying to reframe my situation in some way. Here it is:

397
I wrote a poem once
and told the world 
I know why old men stare,
of how we were in the world 
but not of it. 
I was wrong.
We sit and stare,
still and silent
because this is how
we contain the pain. 
This is how we do battle
with the afflictions
our bodies give us.
Motionless we are fighting,
to stand is to bleed,
to move is to fall,
rock like we resist,
determined but scared;
this is fortitude.

                                                                                   397 02-06-2024

The garden guy has made a decent fist of getting the grass down in the back garden, I give my partner the money to give him and retreat. Back at my laptop I have found that the USB stick in my computer is very hot and when I cool it down and try again it is unresponsive. It appears it is possible to fry a USB stick. There is nothing else for me to do now than rest and stare, and so I do.

While trying to rest I check that my “All in one” file of poetry is complete and find that due to frying my USB stick there are a couple missing. What follows is a lot of laptop juggling and copying and pasting. Eventually I get it sorted and now have two back up USBs of my poetry files. With that finally done I turn to TV and watch some athletics. This leads into the evening meal that my partner has cooked and some more television. All of this is punctuated by my not infrequent sprints to the toilet where I experience my symptoms at varying degrees but at times includes me groaning a bit and resting my head on the wall and muttering obscenities. Invariably I return to the recliner in the lounge and have a period of being quiet and regaining my equilibrium. A film comes on and I realise that I’ve slide in to “Rom Com” night. And so it goes till night meds time arrives and that decision to go to bed and see if sleep happens. The nights seem to be okay for some strange reason, all I can think of is that horizontal good, vertical not so good, which I would normally say is the wrong way round. Clearly this situation is a philosophical challenge. On a practical note the builder badgers are back tomorrow and things will move forward on the project. My final decision of the evening is co-codamol or not, or in other words, when do I know when I am addicted?