DVT DAY 63
Its Sunday, so a lazy coffee and a chat to start off with, all very relaxed. Actually, I had just been to the bathroom to conduct my once a week weigh in. Disastrous really, I weighed in at 101.1 kilos. This is not good and means I am not exercising enough and have slipped in to eating too much sugary foods. It means sweets, puddings, biscuits and honey need to go and go from now. While we are talking about this I get a call from a friend who is out and about already desperately seeking pants for her fast-growing daughter. My daughter sits on the end of or bed and chats about face masks, what’s cool, what is not and where to get the best ones. We go to Cyberdog website and are not disappointed as they specialise in rave gear, so if you want your mask to light up in UV light then this is the place to go.
We negotiate breakfast and settle on scrambled eggs and salmon. So a gentle start to the day before we go our separate ways to prepare for the days activities. I climb into my BAM shorts, pull on a top and track suit top and head for my garden to garden walking circuit. Today I incorporate the patio into the route so I have to climb the couple of steps and down the other side twice on each circuit. Its cold today so I put on a hat and set off with Rammstein cranked up on the i-pod to training pitch. When I trained at the gym I used Rammstein as my training music to provide motivation but more importantly to shut of the constant chatter of fellow gym users out. There is a breed of person who seem incapable of doing anything without running off at the mouth about the most trivial of trivia and doing so incessantly as if everyone else has an innate interest in their life, attitudes and opinions and my god are not short of those. Any way Rammstein provide me with company and motivation to keep going. I have never seen them, although my son has. I read with regret that they have just cancelled their summer European tour, so I shall have to wait even longer. The walk goes well I do just over an hour. I rest on the garden swing seat and my partner brings me a post walk pint of orange squash.
After a rest and another negotiation I head to the bathroom and run myself a hot relieving bath. I lay and enjoy the heat and try to relax. I pick up my book that a friend sent me. It is a collection of short essays on a wide range of topics. The author is an ex prison doctor and psychiatrist who writes about whatever seems to catch his eye in the papers or from conversations with guests at his French house. I found myself intrigued to start with and the views expressed interesting in a strange way, I wasn’t sure why and how. As I read more I began to recognise some of the issues and where the opinions where coming from. What started to make me twitchy was the fact that I began to spot things that were not as my understanding have them. Having spent many years in prison working with offenders and staff I began to find that my experience did not lead me to the same conclusions as the writer. I think the moment when I began to doubt this person’s perceptions, understandings and conclusions is when he appeared to have misunderstood Virginia Wolf’s Three Guineas book. After this I began to read with a more critical eye and found that things that appeared to be asserted were not necessarily accurate. Having said this, I continue to read his essays but with a renewed interest. I will no doubt finish the book, but the most important thing is that this gift has got me reading again, for which I am very grateful.
I climb from the bath a little less stiff and more relaxed than I started. I could hear the sounds of house cleaning and hoovering getting closer and sure enough my partner appears to clean the bathroom. I go down stairs and grab and apple and some cheese as I realise that I have not eaten for 6 or 7 hours. A brief break to see Charlie Dimmock work her magic on a back yard and I go to the kitchen to cook tonight’s meal. A chicken curry with ginger and red chilli. I merrily chop ingredients to the voice of Pavarotti and prepare the dish until I reach the “leave it alone to simmer” stage, from that moment I have and hour to start to write the blog. It is all carefully timed so that the family can eat before Boris pops up on TV to tell us all about what our future holds. Not a lot is the answer. The R values seems to be the key, but my daughter observed that it should be called the “R we there yet”. I listened very carefully but heard no mention of the “Shielded” so I assume my initial house arrest date remains the 14th of June. I reconcile myself to yet more weeks of my circumstances.
The TV continues to tear the arse out of the whole broadcast and state the obvious and stir the differences between England and the rest of the union. I abandon it in favour of Van De Valk .
Good night.
