Tuesday and today I am due to travel to an Elders meeting in Toddington, Gloucestershire. I set about a toast breakfast and coffee before preparing to travel. The hedgehog gets fed early and I clear the kitchen before I pack my bags put the bins out. Today is the day I fill my two drugs wallets for the coming fortnight. It is one of those maintenance rituals that keeps me on track of where I am in my 28 day cycle. I go to the Shed and write my resignation from the Enabling Environment team. A brief matter of a fact letter , which I duly seal and stamp. I also write a letter to a friend. I move my car and then walk over to post my letters before making myself lunch. I ring the hospital to see how my sister is doing and I am pleased to hear she is improving and that people are visiting her and taking food. I send photos of the doors that need locks to the locksmith and confirm that they will come and do the work on Friday.
I drive off at about 2 o’clock and call into the garage on the way to fill the tank and check the tyres. I also load up with goodies to nibble over the next couple of days. The drive is smooth and trouble free and I soon arrive at MB3. I chat with the director and then go and pick a room in the accommodation block. I unpack and head for the yurt in the grounds. It is a big yurt and contains room for an inner ring of 12 chairs and an outer one of 27 chairs. I sit alone on the outer circle and listen to the birds and wait. I usually write in these times but nothing comes so I just sit and listen and wait. After an hour I take a stroll around the grounds and then join a colleague on a bench and chat for a while until we go up to the main building to meet the other attendees.
We sit by the log burner and wait for others to arrive and then eat a dinner of lasagne and salad followed by chocolate cake and ice cream. Back in front of the log burner we chat and reminisce until slowly one by one we retire to bed. I settle down too tired to blog and find myself drifting off. It is a reasonable night with only one or two painful moments and I drift towards the morning and my Eric Sarte alarm at 7:45 on Wednesday.
Wednesday arrives to the loud dawn chorus and Eric Sarte. Its been a reasonable night. I make coffee and take my drugs including some pain killers as I’ve decided to leave the back support off today. I go across for breakfast and sit with my colleagues and chat. I notice on the way over to the main centre two things. Next doors tree carving and the adaptability of nature in the form of blue tit ingenuity.
We wash up and go to the first session in the yurt. Of course none of the content can be here but it was a real personal pleasure to be amidst colleagues who share so much and have a lot in common. We come to our first break and then move into another session to discuss a project that we have under way. Lunch and more reminiscences of TCs past. We move into the afternoon and zoom sessions. These sessions are important and we as a group try to be useful and thoughtful to and with the people we are with. Both of the sessions give us a lot to think about as a team and what we can realistically offer. We use time after the sessions to try and process the content. Our end time comes quickly and people either hurry or drift away. Two of us are staying over tonight and we will find our way to the local pub to dine and then I suspect, retire early. I have a Teams meeting at 9 o’clock in the morning.
