Its Sunday the 13th of July and it looks like I have been able to increase my media library size so that I can add new pictures. So with the techno problems behind me I can catch up on the Blog. I shall keep it to the major points as the days have been quite slow in the heat and activity kept to a minimum.
Friday was a day dominated by my meeting with what looks like my publishers to be. My partner and I drove to the pub where we had agreed to meet at noon. The team from Ruler’s Wit arrived and we settled down to sort out food and the to discuss a way forward for my work. We ranged over a number of things so that by the end of the meeting, and the ice cream, I had a number if things to consider and had agreed to write a document and a wish list to send to the team. Amongst the options was the creation of a web page devoted to the poetry, inclusion on the publishers authors web page, an audio book, an anthology and perhaps a new collection. The basic idea is to have a strategy that links all my resources together and to point people in the right direction if they want to read or own my poetry.
When it came time to go home I drove my partners new car for the first time, which was both fun and slightly anxiety provoking. The evening was filled with continued reading of Syou Ishida’s We’ll prescribe you a cat, the latest Japanese best seller that has copied the format of the “Before the Coffee gets Cold”. I am not sure Ishida’s book is a subtle as the “Coffee” books but it remains an interesting read and reflects the preoccupations of Japanese culture. Eventually its my night routine of medication, finger splint and then sleep.
Saturday was a single, almost, task day and that was to mend and a refurbish the Buddha head from the garden. After breakfast and morning meds I get the cracked head onto the garden table and begin work. It is an all day job as I do the filling and then the repainting of the head, and while I wait for each stage to dry I read more of my Japanese best seller. By the end of the day it is all done and I can return the head to its place beneath the magnolia tree.
After the ritual of watering the garden I settle down to more football and more episodes of The Detectorists. I’ve been in the sun all day and find myself tired at the end of the day so down my night meds and go off to bed.
Sunday I wake up to a big life admin to do list so after morning meds, taking my vitals and having breakfast I got on with a load of admin. I have of course weighted in and find myself holding my weight at 100.1 kilos. It seems that this has become my plateau weight. So by the end of the afternoon I’ve taxed my car, booked a holiday in Norfolk, sorted a Tesco order, scheduled my bloods for the next three months and then I train. Its a hot day so I go for a 45 minute session and I pull quite hard through the time. It goes reasonably well and I come away happy with my performance.
Post row I shower and then watch the men’s final at Wimbledon. There is just time for tea before the England Wales match in the European championships. It is a tetchy watch until England get a penalty. The evening passes with more of The Detectorists and then night meds and a relatively early night, that means before midnight. Behind all of this are two things going on, the first is the processing of the disappearance of the metastatic element of my cancer and the second is the thinking about how I want to take my poetry forward, with or without the publishers. I am aware that that this is all churning away quietly in the background and I am not sure where it will end up.
