Wednesday and I wake quite early and check my messages and socials. Not much in any of them apart from the death of Dolly Parton. My partner brings me a hot water, which I sip while listening to the bin folk empty our bins, or at least two of them, for some reason it take till later in the day for the recycling to be collected. On getting up I make breakfast, take my meds and clear the dish washer. Its in to the washer with my weekly washing load and then I bring the empty bins in. At last the message telling me my drugs can be collected after 3pm today comes through so at some point I will be Ubering into the hospital pharmacy.

My washing gets transferred to the tumble dryer as I am too lazy to hang it out in the free sunshine. I am momentarily expecting rain. I begin to draft the blog and idle away time by writing some verses. I am feeling very fatigued and I am not sure why I am so tired, all I can do is have bursts of activity and then rest before trying to do anything else. A friend calls and we chat about fatigue, she is taking her family abroad soon and is trying to keep work under control while still suffering the effects of long term COVID. In these circumstances energy is in short supply and has to be managed carefully. It seems we have a shared challenge, I could certainly do with more energy.

555
I realise I want to make a noise,
not just play guitar or sing badly
but to be heard.
It is the loudness that seems important,
to ensure that when silence comes
it will be be noticed.
Oh its quiet,
he’s not here anymore.
There is a gap,
where something used to be,
a thing that made a noise 
and drew attention to the world
and its madness's and contradictions
but most of all its meaninglessness
and our shared struggle to make sense 
of it all.
Our constant making of an internal universe
in the hope that someday we would understand.
Now there is a new silence to comprehend 
and another piece of data that needs to be held,
and examined in the sister silence of so much else.
Listen carefully to the absence 
and remember there used to be sound 
where now there is just the moment.

                                                                                  555  26-08-2026

After a light lunch I take some paracetamol and get ready to go to the hospital to collect my steroids. My partner and I take an Uber to and from the hospital. My wait in the pharmacy is minimal so we are soon speeding our way back home where I load up my dossetes with the steroids. I rest for a while before the evening meal and then I settle down to watch more of the Lidia Poet series. I take my night meds, finish the blog and get myself off to bed.