Wednesday and its an Elders meeting day, so I am up and breakfasting fairly quickly once I am up. I have some work admin to do and emails to check. I find a receipt for my entry fee for the Kent and Sussex Poetry Society poetry competition. That’s two competitions that I have entered now. Only winners will get notified so I am expecting to drift in in to 2022 in silence. I have the feeling that I should have just torn up a couple of twenty pound notes and got on with life. Anyway its done now. I fill my drugs wallets for the next two weeks, one of my fortnightly rituals. Eleven o’clock rolls round and I Zoom in to the Elders meeting. There is a new face and some bad news from someone who I write to. The meeting pursues its project goals and we meander to the conclusion. The meeting ends with “leave meeting” clicks, and that’s it. All that stays with me is a friends news. I need to write.

Its lunchtime and I stop for soup. I start to run through my poem files and select out the “hotel and restaurant” poems. They are going to be the next poetry coyote video. I find I have quite a lot and will need to edit them before I record. What I have learnt is that none of the poems I use on my YouTube cannot be used in any competitions. Another reason why I prefer to use the YouTube channel and ignore the poetry industry. A work for a while, clear the kitchen and then get into my training kit. What I cannot get to work properly are a pair of ear buds. The buds work but my ears just cannot keep them in. I wanted to be able to train in them but it is going to be hopeless. As I listen to some music my phone rings and the call pops up in my ear buds, the caller can hear me, I am surprised, such a bummer that my ears cannot keep the buds in. We have a chat and talk about what we are doing and how things are panning out with COVID and our current plans. Its a real pleasure to be able to chat, but the Real World calls and there are children to be collected and training sessions to be done.

I head for the garage having abandoned my buds and reverted to my head phones. I strap my feet in, select a level and the time. Its going to be an hour, the first time I’ve rowed for an hour for a while. I start steady and let myself stretch and build up a rhythm. By the end of the hour I am dripping wet but more than satisfied with the way the session has gone.

I wander back to the “soffice” to record the session and find that Amazon has delivered my Prickles starter pack. I have taken my role of Hogherd seriously and bought the right food. All I need to do now is construct a feeding station and gauge when to start to tempt my hog out with well chosen morsels.

I change out of my training gear and load the dishwasher and then return to the “soffice” to tidy up some emails. I settle into the early evening TV and then my partner returns from visiting her mother and we finish off last nights fish pie. The TV provides NCIS wallpaper as I start to write the blog. As the evening wears on I can feel myself getting more and more tired. As my partner reminds me, training, dieting and doing a new medication might have something to do with it. That might be true but I don’t think cancer is going to let me off, so regardless, it is necessary to keep fighting. So I shall head for bed early and gather spoons for tomorrows meetings, gym and a delightful trip to the recycling centre to wave farewell to the dead Dyson, Long live Henry.