Friday, New Years Eve, I wake to find my partner at work in the office downstairs. I get myself up to make peanut better toast and coffee with my drugs. I have a mission. Today I must get to the chemist to see if they have my injection for Tuesday. Its tricky timing as the bank holiday has pushed my injection date on a day. By the time I have done my washing and stuck it in the dryer it time to go drug hunting. My partner and I walk down to the village chemist. To my surprise and relief the drugs are there including a repeat prescription for my antiandrogens, which have been added on in the assumption that I have forgotten to order them with the rest of my drugs. I am only slightly irked as in the long run it will save me a job. We buy some food at the Co-Op next door and then head home.

My partner prepares lunch but I decline, I think the new drugs maybe supressing my appetite, it however does not stop me taking half a bar of Tony’s Chocolonley with me to the Shed to accompany a mug of coffee. I spend time writing letters and when finished I walk over to the post box. I find that the next collection is Tuesday! This time I am fully miffed, its well before the normal Friday collection time which was indicated the last time I posted from here. There has obviously been an early Friday collection and clearly a buggering off till Tuesday. I return to the shed and Spring clean it. I rearrange some aspects of it, restore my nib collection and empty the waste bin. I promise myself that I will spend more time in the Shed in 2022, it is where I am at my most me. My pen and my ink flow best here.

I return to the house and check the evening meal that I put in the slow cooker earlier. Its doing just fine so I change in to my training gear and go to the garage to row. Its a real effort to make myself get ready and to go to the garage, I am beginning to think that the new drugs are making me tired but it could equally be my going to bed late. I like to have time for me at the end of the day which invariably means I am the last to go to bed. Perhaps in 2022 I should find another evening routine. I get into the garage and get strapped in and row for half an hour. My intention was to take it easy but as always as I warm up I speed up, so what was meant to be a loosening six kilometres turns into a bit of a sprint at the end, with a final distance over seven kilometres. It will do as the last one of 2021. I run a bath and soak in a bath bomb bath listening to a music request programme.

This evening started with dinner and then I retreated to the sofa to write the blog, send Happy New Year messages and respond to those I am getting. I will inevitably Hootenanny into the new year and then wake to my new self imposed regime. My pixies will get drunk and career around my head for a couple of days and I will settle down to a new routine. I should set myself some New Year Resolutions so here we go:

• Stay alive
• Be kinder
• Notice the ordinary
• Contribute
• Spend more time in the Shed
• Train regularly
• Eat protein and fruit, low carbs.
• Enter some poetry competitions
• Keep writing letters to friends
• Buy less on Amazon
• Learn how to plait my own hair
• Play guitar more.
• Tend the garden
• Feed the squirrels and the birds.

That should keep me occupied for a while while I make my way back into the world.