Its Monday and I wake up alone, my partner choosing the spare bed to ease her back. I get up and make hot drinks and empty the dish washer. All very anticlimactic after yesterdays birthday fun. I’ve already taken my vitals and when I return upstairs with drinks she is back in our bed. We sit and drink and chat before I get up to take my meds. After a quick toast breakfast I am off on a series of small puttering tasks. All the small but necessary stuff like changing light bulbs in the kitchen equipment and other such tasks. All of this takes time and soon half the day is done. One of my birthday gifts was some new garden lights so I spend sometime putting them together and then deciding where to put them in the front garden and drive. Its a tricky decision but I opt for a strategy of lighting the the front of the house along the pot line as it is south facing adn best for solar lights.

As the afternoon comes around I am sorting out my “winter” and “spares” wardrobe space. A ritual refolding of jumpers and restacking of new shirts and trousers for the chillier months, this satisfying activity is interrupted by my brother in law bringing me a birthday present, so of course we stop for drinks and small rascals. While I have him I show him the draft of his and his sisters family tree. We paw over it for a while as I check that I have the right people on the right generational level. It seems that I have and that my brother in law has more information about some of the family history, which he is going to let me have later in the week. Once I have integrated the new information I can start to put the detailed person information labels in place. After our chat I return to putting socks and other things in order.

At tea time I am checking a book list that a friend has sent me and then as my partner has her singing lesson I watch some more of the European women’s football championship while drafting the blog. So the first day of my 78th year comes to an end with the usual night time rituals of medicine and strapping my right hand into the finger splint that I have to continue to wear until the 31st of this month. So I will have had a post birthday rest day and tomorrow it will be back to training just as the weather is due to turn hot again. In all this I am still trying to come to terms with the oncology team telling mem I am metastasis free. It seems to have rattled my cage more than I thought.