Saturday and in a fit of energy I take my partner to the garden entre with the best breakfast menu once I have filled my drugs wallets for the next two weeks. I take her in my car determined to drive and to give my car n airing as I’ve just re-taxed it. To my relief no warning lights come up and the car drives well. The restaurant at the garden centre has few people in it, which is good so we are shown to a table where we order breakfast. I go for the full gardeners breakfast and a pot of hot water. My partner and I chat until the food arrives by which time a party of at least two families arrives and is seated adjacent to us. They are going to be married in a couple of hours time apparently. At least one combination of people round e table are going to be. My Gardner’s breakfast is good but the pot of hot water is not so good and has a funny look and tasty about it. As the wedding party get noisier the more uncomfortable I get so we leave but buy a hanging basket on the way out.
It is ridiculous but this simple activity has tired me out. When I get home I hang the hanging basket out front and retreat to the recliner for a while, whilst my partner goes off shopping for fruit and veg. Apparently chocolate eclairs count as veg. There is some life admin to be done and post to be read but it all seems manageable. I watch the women’s Wimbledon final and all the emotion that goes with it. There is the natural glee and despondence of winning and losing, which is fine, what I cannot take is the desperate manufacturing of extra layers of emotional meaning and story that bloody Claire Balding tries to wring out of every moment and every opportunity. Any hint of relationship with someone dead is squeezed to get the most “televisual” human story out of it. The winner probably just wanted to go and celebrate without all the morbid shit that Balding is dragging up. With the final over there is the men’s doubles to watch in which there is a Brit in one of couples. When the Brits team finally win as an unseeded couple beating a very pissed off looking seeded pair of Australians (He He!) the Brits Finnish partner blubs and blubs and blubs. The Brit of course maintains an appropriate demeanour of joy with out hysteria, as it should be, after all it is tennis not a matter of life and death, no matter what Clare bloody Balding tries to make it.
The evening meal follows, which is where I discover that a chocolate éclair is a fruit. Some where in this early evening time I find the energy to lay a fire in the chimenea on the patio thinking that I might light it later and enjoy the full lighting and comfort of the new patio. It is a fantasy that remains just that, a fantasy. Having bought season six of SWAT my partner and I settle down to watch several episodes before my partner goes to bed adn I clear the kitchen before going to bed. I am taking my night meds when I notice on the news that some one has had a go at shooting Donald Trump, but failed. Why has it taken so long is my question, not that shooting people is a good thing ever but given America and its mass weaponry tinged with its current polarisation I am surprised no one has had a go before. So having taken my meds I go to bed.
Sunday and I have had a shit night where I resorted to taking a co-codalmol at three in the morning to get to sleep. The result is I wake up with birdcage mouth, cricket ball gut and feeling as tired as when I went to bed. Eventually I get up and make my partner and I warm drinks and we read and chat for a while until my partner gets up to make breakfast while I check my vitals. My vitals are okay. Breakfast is close to being brunch and by the time it is eaten and I am settled the garden guy turns up with his petrol mower to annoy the neighbours before he goes on holiday to Greece for a while. I’m now looking forward to the men’s Wimbledon final and of course England taking on Spain in the final of the European Football Championship. A friend has bought me a “Wreck this Journal” as a birthday present and I start work on it by tagging pages that need things stuck into them and numbering the pages as well as breaking the spine of the journal as instructed. A brutal first move for a book lover to do.
I now have two thing to turn to when inspiration is low, a reminder that nothing flows unless the tap is turned on and selection of taps to try. All very useful as I keep working away at the third collection of the Cancer Years poetry series. Having started the wrecking process I try to catch up with drafting the blog. In the background there is the arrival of princess Kate at Wimbledon and of course bloody Claire Balding instantly comments on her recent cancer treatment. Time for lunch.
Post lunch the Wimbledon finalists come on to court but my partner and I head for our favourite garden centre for plants. We arrive to an almost empty garden centre and have the run of the place. Its the end of season for bedding plants so its possible to buy entire trays for cheap as chips money. My partner and I load up a trolley and are soon heading home with a boot full of goodies. Once home the trays of plants are unloaded and the planting begins as Carlos Alcaraz wins Wimbledon. The raised beds have been moved by the garden guy this morning along with having cut the grass and make the ideal place for the new plants. There is a concerted burst of planting and watering and pretty soon the plants are all in new homes. Its beginning to look like the garden is being retrieved after the chaos and damage that having the new patio being built created. Slowly but surely the garden recovers, with a little help.
By the time all the plants are in and the tools are cleared away I am spoonless and return to the recliner. All I can do is watch the end of a Bond film and add to the draft blog. It’s two hours to go before the big match so I am hunkering down and preparing for the evening meal and then the game afterwards. I am not optimistic but hopefully I am proved wrong.
Nope I was right to be pessimistic, England lose 2-1 with a tepid display. Nothing for it but to watch an episode of SWAT followed by the BBC prom of Verdi’s Requiem, which seems most apt. I take my night meds and go to bed hoping for a better nights sleep. Onward into a new week and still fighting to find some equilibrium, some confidence in my body, and a sense of some sort of wellness or at least recovery.
