Friday and today my partner and daughter are off to London to see Cirque Du Soleil, but first there is a work meeting to do. A session with one of my services, it goes well as the people there are positive and engaged. As soon as I log off I do the taxi run to the station and drop my partner and eldest daughter off to get their train. I drive to the gym and do an hour on the cross trainer. Its a very tired session and I just about manage to burn 687 calories over 7.12 kilometres. A warm shower and I sit in the club lounge to drink coffee and to eat a chicken fajita salad. I’m feeling very tired at the end of what has been a long training and dieting week. I get myself home and watch rugby while I wait for my new fitness tracker to arrive. It arrives and I am like a kid with a new toy. Like all new toys it takes up my time as I learn its secrets. I finally strap it on and begin a new relationship with a gadget.

I while away the rest of my evening by clearing the kitchen and watching more episodes of the Witcher until its time to take my drugs and take myself to bed. Once in bed I cannot sleep and at one point seriously consider getting up again but persevere until I guess that I finally fall asleep.

Saturday and I finally wake up about 10 o’clock. It again seems that my best time to sleep is in the morning. I look at my new fitness tracker and I am very surprised to see that I apparently I slept for more than 9 hours. I do not think my new gadget can tell the difference between sleep and staring into the darkness. I have breakfast and then put the evening meal into the slow cooker, so by the magic of kitchen gadgets there will be a meal ready in the evening. I settle down to watch the midday football game, which is going well when Amazon unexpectedly deliver my new hedgehog feeding station/house. Rather than bugger about with some sort of home made contraption made from bricks and a cat bed turned upside down I’ve bought a properly constructed feeding box.

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I put some of the dry Prickles hedgehog food on a plate inside the house and place the box next to the point where my hedgehog has housed itself in my green house. I also put out a shallow dish of water nearby. Tomorrow I shall check the camera to see if the hedgehog has been out and about or whether its going to sleep through for longer. From now on I need to check the camera regularly and heck on the canteen to see if any of the food is being eaten. I return to watching rugby until its time to go and collect my partner and eldest daughter from the station. It goes well, drive in easy, short wait and speedy return. We watch our local rugby team win narrowly over an Irish team in the European competition. Game over I go to train in the garage. I row for half an hour. It is a painful and tired session, the last of the week and I am feeling it.

I return from the garage, change and settle down to eat the meal that was put in the slow cooker in the morning. It is very welcome. There is more TV during the evening and I have time to look at the presents that have been brought for me in London.

All of this week comes to nothing if tomorrow when I weigh myself in there is no weight loss. It would be nice to see at least some decrease even if its small. It feels as if I am working against more things at the moment. My anxiety is that my new medication is going to make it more difficult for me to control my weight. It is one of the few things that I feel I have some control over that might affect my cancers progress or not. I can indulge in all sorts of intellectual activities and become different things, like the poetry coyote, but I know that none of this will alter the cell chemistry that is nibbling away at me. It raises the issues of what quality of life actually means to me. It is a question that I return to over and over as things change but there are anchors that fix me and provide the stability. Every one of the anchors are people or people related, but its a fine balance between time to be with them and the time I need to think, reflect and create.