Monday and I am up early as I am off to the GP for my monthly injection with the added bonus of a B12 jab as well this month, I am well prepared and organised today, gym bag already packed. I down my morning meds and drive to the surgery. It does not take long, I am in and out in a very short time with my white fluffy cloud stuck to my stomach. I drive to the gym, order coffee and a bacon adn egg roll and then sit an write a letter. It feels odd sitting in the gym lounge writing a letter but it is quite nice to be away from home writing. I have bought a second padlock so that I can have two lockers for my bags, a second pink one.
I get on a cross trainer and bang out an hour during which I burn 722 calories and go 7.90kilometres. I toy with the idea of doing some weights but decide not to, I just want to get in the shower to easy the soreness and sense of tightness around the injection site. The shower is good and I head for the lounge and another coffee. I intend to have soup for lunch but the bar tender tells me soup is off, so I stick with just a coffee.
I return home adn make myself a smoothie before walking to the post box and then on to the co-op to buy food for the evening meal. Tesco is delivering late tonight so I decide to cook a chicken Jalfrazi. Once home I cook and get the masterpiece gently bubbling on the range. It turns out that my eldest daughter is going out for the evening from work so there is just the two of us to enjoy the meal. We eat and then mop up some of the series that we have been watching on TV. We finish Young Wallander, Professor T and get the end of Click Bait in sight before calling it a day. My day catches up with me so I have mem evening meds, more paracetamol and head for bed.
Tuesday, pancake day, St David’s day and the day of my work one to one. I eat a muesli breakfast and get ready for my meeting. A colleague WhatsApps me and shares some family news, which might have a work bearing later in the week. At 10 o’clock I log in and start the meeting with a review of how my oncology review went and how I am. We discuss the future and the options and agree a way forward. Once this is out of the way we review my work and make appropriate plans. We end the meeting, I put my washing in and go to the gym feeling slightly of kilter. This mornings meeting has left me with some interesting feelings. I get to the gym, buy a bottle of water and then get on a cross trainer for an hour. I burn 717 calories and go 8.09 kilometres, much teh same as yesterday except today my injection site feels more sore. This is usual. The day after is very often the worst day. A shower and then to the lounge, which is pleasingly empty. I sip americano and nibble an egg and bacon roll, slowly. I am still pensive from this morning and dawdle over my coffee. Eventually I drive home, put my washing in the dryer, grab the newspaper and head for the Shed where I do the crosswords.
I emerge about 5 o’clock and decide I will keep it simple for tea tonight, soup, my gut is off and settle down to catch the blog up from yesterday and today. There will be soup and football this evening and an early night. I am hoping that as the days extend and the weather gets warmer, where is climate change and global warming when you want them, that I will become more activated and energised. At the moment I feel sluggish and there is definitely a limit to how much Ukraine news I can watch. Perhaps we will all go out with a bang and not a whimper as T.S Elliot suggested.
The Hollow Men
Mistah Kurtz-he dead
A penny for the Old Guy
I
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar
Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;
Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom
Remember us-if at all-not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.
II
Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death’s dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind’s singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.
Let me be no nearer
In death’s dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat’s coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer-
Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom
III
This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man’s hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.
Is it like this
In death’s other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.
IV
The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms
In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river
Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death’s twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.
V
Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o’clock in the morning.
Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
Life is very long
Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
