Wednesday and its drugs and Elders meeting day. I get out of bed to a coffee and muesli breakfast and then fill my drugs wallets for the next two weeks. At 11 o’clock I log on to join the Elders meeting and of course we talk about the situation in the Ukraine. We are a nice group of educated, caring people but we struggle to find a contribution to make. I express how appalled I am at the difference between our governments response to the humanitarian need and the kindness and compassion of the German people offering room in their homes to Ukrainians arriving by train in Berlin. We manage crisps in Calais and no where to get a visa or anyone to get one from. During our discussion someone pointed us in the direction of the woman who offered Russian soldiers sun flower seeds to put in their pockets so that when they died flowers would grow. I have put below the video and the transcript of what she said. My kind of woman but I have to say the soldier did try to be polite, I wonder what he thinks he is doing. As someone in the group said that’s a classic reality confrontation.

Full transcript

Read the transcript in full below:

Woman: Who are you?

Soldier: We have exercises here. Please go this way.

Woman: What kind of exercises? Are you Russian?

Soldier: Yes.

Woman: So what the fck are you doing here?

Soldier: Right now our discussion will lead to nothing.

Woman: You are occupants, you are fascists! What the fuck are you doing on our land with all these guns? Take these seeds and put them in your pockets, so at least sunflowers (Ukrainian national flower) will grow when you all lie down here.

Soldier: Right now our discussion will lead nowhere. Let’s not escalate this situation. Please.

Woman: What situation? Guys, guys. Put the sunflower seeds in your pockets please. You will lie down here with the seeds. You came to my land? Do you understand? You are occupiers. You are enemies.

Soldier: Yes.

Woman: And from this moment, you are cursed. I’m telling you.

Soldier: Now listen to me…

Woman: I’ve heard you.

Soldier: Let’s not escalate the situation. Please go this way.

Woman: How can it be further escalated? You fcking came here uninvited. Pieces of sh*t

The group will try to do something to support colleagues even if it is only to offer a space in which to talk and exchange ideas and information. We will see how it turns out over the next few days. We end our meeting and go our separate ways. For me it is going to the garden to see if the hedgehog has eaten of the food put out fresh yesterday. It is good news one of the little dishes is empty, I note it is the more moist food that has been eaten so I replenish the dish with some Prickles meat treat. I also dig out the dog bowl that has languished in the garage for a long time, give it a clean and fill it with fresh water. So now the hedgehog has water as well as food if it hasn’t found its way to the pond. I look up some hedgehog information and discover that my belief that baby hedgehogs are called Hoglets is wrong, they are in fact called Urchins. I like the ideas of Urchin hogs. Its time to go to the gym while my partner goes to see her mother with her brother.

The gym is empty. I have the changing rooms to my self and there are only one or two people on the gym flor when I get there. I get on a cross trainer and start my hour. It is painful adn hard going. This new medication is taking it out of me and my energy levels are low. It feels as if I can only two major things in a day at the moment. I can work and gym , or garden and work, or garden and gym, or work and work but what I can’t do is any more at the moment. That is without factoring in reading or music playing or Shed time and Shed time lays at the heart if my future plans for correspondence and the poetry coyote.

So the hour is tough, I burn only 601 calories and go 8.08 kilometres. This is a reasonable distance but a lousy calorie loss. I shower and recover in the lounge with a coffee and an egg and bacon bun. I deal with emails and WhatsApp messages and as five o’clock closes in I drive home to an Amazon delivery of replacement mop heads and a widow cleaners card. Kit into the washing and I settle down to my evening, I’m not hungry so I draft the blog. I am finding at the moment that if I leave the blog to the late night then I’ve not the energy to do it or at least to make a reasonable stab at it. My evening will be a soupy one and a footbally one, after which I shall retreat to my bed and hope that I sleep. My new medication, that I take at night, works its work on me during my sleep, or lack of it, so I wake up feeling tired and needing time to get myself going. It feels as if my daily store of energy spoons is decreasing. This is the practicality of the relentlessness of cancer, to which I can only respond by equally relentlessly resisting and remaining engaged.