Saturday and I am up latish. Breakfast and morning meds done I check to see where my sprung clamps are in terms of delivery. They are due between 1:30 and 3:30pm which means I have time to go and buy the materials I need to mend the fence panel that has lost its top binding slats and coping length. So after a bit of faffing about I and my partner drive to the local WIckes. I peruse the wood stocks and odds and ends while my partner gives the garden section a look. I find wood that is not cured and will need treating, my partner finds fence panel batons at a fraction of the price which match the panel I am mending. With the wood found and a tube of no nails we look for paint for the bannisters and the garage door. I am astounded at the price of paint! It is so expensive, admittedly it is a long time since I bought paint but it seems incredible to me that the price is so high. We find what paint we want and then go to the check out. Luckily I had taken Elsie (the SUV) so I could get the wood lengths in to the car relatively easily. Then it was home via a garden centre for a coffee and a toasted tea cake. The coffee lodge was full on Halloween, which was very lovely and fun.

Once home I needed a bit of a rest and watched a rugby match before I gathered together the tool and materials I needed to do the fence panel. While watching the rugby the sprung loaded clamps I ordered arrived so my tool needs were completed. While I prepared my partner planted up the pots with the plants we had bought. eventually I got to work. The repair concept was easy but as always as in real life the repair was more challenging. Over time fence panels change shape and warp a bit which meant that the top line of the fence panel had bowed. It meant making adjustments to the lengths that I was applying and some crafty jiggery pokery. The buying of the spring clamps was a stoke of genius as I was able to set the top binding lathes in place with the clamps before screwing them and gluing them in place. With the lathes in place I could then place the capping lathe on top of them, making the finish rain proof. The top cap was also screwed and glued. After a lot of adjustments the job was done and all I could hope for was that everything would dry and stay in place over night, which it has.

Why is it that putting the tools away after any job seems to take for ever? However I get all the tools stowed away including the new spring clamps, which I am sure will come in handy again at a future date. I then settle down to watch some more excellent rugby before tea and of course Strictly, the Halloween special. It was the usual nonsense but mindlessly entertaining. No idea who will go out this week, the public are so fickle. My partner and I watch the final episodes of Cross an American police drama. Interestingly the major murderer appears to live while the hero turns in his badge unable to face the systems lack of moral fortitude. Meds then beds in the hope of sleep and weight loss at tomorrows weigh in.

Sunday and I have slept well and get up to make breakfast and take my morning medications. I start to draft the blog however my partner and I decide to go to the garden centre to get food, plants and to start our Christmas food shopping by enrolling in the butchers Christmas club. We do all of this successfully so back home I continue the blog and wait for the afternoons football match to come onto the TV. For the first time in a while I am running out of new books to read but I am aware that I still have an unused book token so I might risk a trip to a book shop at some point, probably when I go to have my eyes tested again as its a while since I did.

The football match is a goal fest and is a good watch after which I watch some standard Sunday afternoon TV while I keep warm. My intention is to watch the Strictly results show and then go for an early night. Tomorrow has a lot of life admin to do and medical sessions to organise. Of course I have to train and I am determined to keep pushing my performance on, either by extending the sessions or increasing the resistance level. I am not loosing weight. When I weighed in today I found my weight had not moved despite my training, so I will need to start changing my diet and cutting out some of the things I eat. Sweets, biscuits and buns are the obvious ones to go. More muesli and less bread based things. November is upon me and the pressure is to get on with my “body for Christmas” campaign.