Thursday and I wake up ready for the day once I have gone through my waking rituals. There is a lot of domestic stuff to do during the day. In anticipation of training I am in my training gear but before \i get to go to the garage I spend a lot of time finalising some financial stuff. It always takes me time at to work through the various options and to master the technology. With that done I take some time out to read more of Orbital, it inspires me to send a book of poetry to a friend. Lunch time comes and goes and then I can no longer put off going to the rower. I get on board the rower and set off for a half hour session. It is always hard going later in the day as the energy levels can be low. So this session was a grind and I did not reach my 6 kilometre standard, but it is all I can manage this afternoon.

With the session recorded I shower and get ready to go out and meet friends at a Mark Steel show in Loughborough. My partner and I arrive in plenty of time so we have time for a drink before our friends arrive. The Mark Steel show entitled “A Leopard in my house” is mostly about his experience of being diagnosed and treated for throat cancer. It is an energetic and honest performance and above all very funny, at least I found it so. I recognised a lot of the moments of the cancer journey and the insanely funny and quirky things that happen along the way. My partner found it more difficult which goes to show how many sides there are to dealing with cancer and its effects on every one involved.

At the end of the show my partner and I drive home where I am confronted with the consequences of one of my poems. So as a result number 436 is not for publication. Eventually I get my night meds down me and go to bed with a head full of thoughts from the evening.

Friday arrives and I sleep late, clearly tired out by yesterdays experiences. The days plan goes out the windowe h, so I take my morning meds and then go with my partner to the gym. Before going into the gym I pop into the gym spa to book my next nail session. With that done I go to the lounge gym to have breakfast and wait for my partner. When she reappears we take the car to our local garage and book it in to have an unnerving grinding noise to be investigated. On the way back home we drop into a garden centre for snacks and petunias. Home and there is time to rest and prepare for the evening. Its the usual Friday fare of rugby and TV, except this evening I have to decide which poem if any I am going to take to tomorrows face to face poetry stanza meeting. I admit I am losing track of the ones I have already taken, but I have several new ones that might be suitable. Inevitably there are the bed time meds and the wearing of the finger splint.