So Thursday dawns and the decorators arrive for the last time. I get up and get ready for a meeting followed by an open forum. They went okay. I have time for a quick spat with the RCP over their attitude to services and me. Anything out of that can wait till 2021 if I can be arsed. By the time I emerged from the bedroom, which was the only space available to work in this morning, the decorators had left! its time to set about putting the house back in order. I re-wax and polish two big storage chests that live in the hall and return them to there places. I clear the lounge and put the new rug down. I designer affair that is supposed to be inspired by the frozen ice of the skating rink in Central Park.
Gradually things come together but it will take tomorrow and the weekend to get everything sorted. I unpack my Amazon parcels and set about replacing the machine heads on the banjo that I’m restoring. It goes well.
New Machine Heads sorted.
Next comes the restringing and tuning, which also goes well with the aid of the banjo tuner app I downloaded on to the phone.
Its a classic English tunneled resonator 5 string, 22 fret banjo.Quiterare I’m told.
Tea and a film while my partner does her on line singing lesson and then we try to find new curtains for the lounge. We succeed but of course they are out of stock. That’s life for you. I write the blog while watching Christmas specials of Mock the Week. Midnight, time for bed, reflection and recall.
Wednesday and the decorator arrives to continue the hall way. I cook a bacon bagel and settle down at my end of the sofa. I work on the banjo project removing the machine heads and discover that one of them is a bodged job. Someone before me has tried to mend a broken shim on one of the winding posts and made a hash of it. I desperately try to find a set of machine heads for a tunnelled 5 string banjo. No chance, no one makes them anymore, this banjo of mine is an old English traditional resonance 22 fret banjo with a split head and tunnelled fifth string. I decide to replace the machine head plates with individual machine heads and set about trying to find some. Eventually I get to order some and for good measure I order a set of finger picks. With luck they will arrive tomorrow and I can crack on with the renovation.
I write a letter using my re-found dipping pen, its slower but satisfying. I write till lunch tine and then go to my partners mothers house to collect her post and make sure the house is okay while she is in hospital. In all its about an hour and a half round trip. Back home we eat lunch and I return to my letter writing. At three o’clock I take a break to attend a webinar on Forgiveness in 2020 given by the Elders group. The speakers included the ex presidents of Ireland and Columbia and an ex United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights so the quality of experience was interesting and brought a new view of transitional justice and the process of achieving peace in nations coming out of conflict. At the end I finished my letter. I try to tidy some of the chaos that is around but end up framing a set of water colours that my eldest daughter brought back from Italy a summer ago. I had order the frame a few days ago and it turned up today. Now I have to think where it will go when we rehang our art after the decorators have finished. Post tea I clear the kitchen and help my partner select a radio for her mother and half watch football. During the day I have WhatsApp messages from friends, one in particular is under the weather and retreating to bed. It makes me “itchy” to be back to normal where I can comfort friends and be able to interact normally. Now its time to blog and get ready for tomorrows work meetings and open forum.
Tuesday and its been a day of dancing round the decorators as they are doing the ground floor hall. So after a quick bowl of muesli I settle down to write letters. I find an old dipping pen and a bottle of calligraphy ink and set about writing letters. As I get used to the pen it begins to flow okay except for some reason the letter D creates me problems. I reply to a letter from a family friend who is the president of the local WI and refers to her efforts to write a WI news letter during COVID. Out of curiosity I go the website and read her newsletter but in doing so I come across a “women only” contribution from a member. Of course anything that suggests that it is not suitable for husbands is an instant magnet. I find myself laughing out loud at the description of knicker buying habits and hospital visits for women’s reasons. Apparently M&S knickers are not just knickers they are M&S knickers. By lunchtime I have letters to post and have two interesting parcels to investigate.
I prepare the tools I need to hang the new mirror that has just arrived, but before I can crack on with this I talk a walk to the post box and send my letters on their merry way. Back home I start the measuring up for the mirror and select a large rawplug and appropriate drill. It all goes well, I think and then I try to screw the retaining screw. It fails the rawplug rotates in the hole. FFS! I take the rawplug out and use a rapid self setting filler to fil the hole. Before it sets I screw the retaining screw into it and leave it all to harden for a couple of hours. In the interim I eat tea, wrap a Christmas present and begin to put things back into the library room. It comes time for the moment of truth. Joy the filler has set solid around the screw. I hang the mirror and I am greatly pleased with the outcome.
A good job well done, so I move on to setting the library right and then I ck turn my attention to renovating an old 5 string traditional English banjo. Quite a rarity but it has been kicking about for a long time. Its unusual as it has a solid wooden sounding box. I start by unstringing it and cleaning it. I have new string and a phone app to help me tune buy one of the machine heads it faulty and I will need to replace it. Time to write the blog and plan tomorrow.
Tomorrow I have a discussion to go to on line. Its given by the Elders, a group started by Nelson Mandela to discuss international issues related to peace and co-existence. The ex president of Ireland is leading tomorrows discussion on forgiveness. I’m looking forward to it.
Monday, cue 8 o’clock mild panic. I need to clear the hallway before the decorators arrive and that means filling a Hippo megabag, moving a car and setting it up by the front hedge. So I ploughed on and lugged stuff out to the megabag until the hall way was clear. Target achieved by 8:50 and I have a meeting at 9 o’clock. Time for coffee, three ginger nuts and to set up the laptops in the lounge. At 9 o’clock I am chasing links from Zoom to Teams and back again.
For a few minutes its IT chaos as people grappled with getting on the right platform and getting through the hosts firewall and security protocols. We all eventually find a space on the screen and say hello. We prepare to meet our guest a half hour later and try to decide what we want from the meeting. Our guests arrives and we begin our presentations which were to lead onto discussions about the future nature of our work. Of course I cannot tell you the details or I would have to kill you.
Our guest leaves and we take a quick break before retuning to our beloved Zoom platform and continue with our meeting. Of course if I told you the content of this bit of the meeting I would have to kill you again. Enabling environments can be tricky things.
The meeting ends before it was scheduled to due to medical reasons and we all went our different ways. Time to grab something to eat and to realign the day. Time to clear the kitchen and to deal with the post.
I spend the afternoon continuing to clear things up and tidy up some of the house chaos that has resulted from the decorators being let lose on the house. Eventually I sit down to organise an updated to do list and think about what I am going to be doing for the rest of the week. I settle down to read a chapter in my latest book to research the paper I am writing about the learning from the enabling environment work. Its strange stuff and I am rereading some old theoretical stuff about group behaviour, or at least perceived group behaviour. By tea time I’m ready for some TV and a programme on the development of the COVID vaccine. Fascinating stuff and fun to watch scientists becoming celebrities and being rather taken aback by the experience. Along the way my new set of five string banjo strings arrived followed by the dozen gold candles I had ordered.
So I plan an early night to catch up on my sleep deficit. I need to train and get back to a routine but while my environment is disrupted I find it difficult to settle and to do the things I want to do in the way I want to do them. It is discomforting and I miss not being to be able to be myself.
Sunday after a night in the spare bed as I was having trouble sleeping, I get set to install the replacement microwave. I sort the tools I need, to wit one screwdriver. The new one is unpackaged and checked for damage. No damage. I unplug the old one from its socket that is above the shelf above the microwave. The only way to get it out is to unwire the plug because the shelve cannot be taken out without dismantling one end of the kitchen units. It works, the cable pulls thorough and the old microwave slides neatly out of its nest. I was hoping that I could unwire the new plug and then rewire it through a small hole in the shelf which I intended to drill. The new plug is moulded. Change of plan, a square big enough to take the plug and any future renewals. Sounds sensible doesn’t it. So I cut a square by drilling holes and sawing through.
The perfect solution, for a moment I am proud.
Feeling a moment of pride ( I should know better) I thread the new cable through lifting the microwave up to ensure the fixed ended cable threads fully. At this point my day turned to rat shit. The bloody new (identical model of microwave oven) is 3 millimetres too tall to fit the space!!!!!!
3 mm too high for Christ sake is nothing easy
So I get nearly every tool I own out of the garage and set about cutting a slot in the upper shelf in order to get the damn thing in. Jigsaw and drill to the rescue. It takes time to get it set up and completed. Everything has to be cleaned and cleared away before I try to fit the new oven in .
The slot is cut, now the clearing up.
The moment of the truth as I once again thread the plug and cable through the square in the shelf and then slide the oven into the space. Smooth and perfect, it slides in. Three screws later it is firmly fixed in and the facia is clipped in place. I win.
There will be popcorn!
I am knackered from the aggravation, I clear the decks and have a non alcohol beer. I am mildly satisfied but there is more to do, there always is, so I start to help to clear the library and hall way ready for the decorators tomorrow. I also set up my office end of the sofa so that I can attend a day long meeting tomorrow. We have gathered a lot of stuff that is going to be jettisoned so in the morning before decorators adn meeting a Hippobag will need filing. We are getting close to completion but it is always the odds and ends at the finish that take the time and are the most irritating.
So eventually I get to sit down and think about what I am going to present in my 5 minute slot in the meeting tomorrow. Mid way in my thoughts a colleague emails with the 26 slides she intends to present in her slot. I ask you 26! Another colleague WhatsApp me and makes his view clear as well, which he has emailed to our colleague. Already I am absent from the meeting and wondering if the rug I ordered from a dodgy Chinese website will ever turn up.
An evening of His Dark Materials and writing the blog whilst keeping an eye on the football results fills the day.
Saturday, its wet and dreary outside so its time to get breakfast and crack on with the task of getting the house back in order. Before I can get going I have to fill my weekly drugs wallet, its becoming a Saturday breakfast routine. So we set to cleaning and returning things to their former places and doing the washing. So basically its controlled chaos. I get the tools ready to put the new roman blind up in the office, the final finishing touch. I know my house and take time to look at the fixings that came with the blind, I am suspicious. The screws and the rawplugs do not look compatible with the fabric of my window surrounds. I do the measuring and mark the screw holes necessary. Sure enough when I start to drill I find at least three layers of different types of material. I pop in one of the supplied rawplus and attempt to screw in one of the holding brackets. The screw jams short of a full securing. I remove the rawplug and replace with a different type and make another attempt. Success. I get on with the other two fixings using the new rawplugs. Once in place I clear the area and clean it before taking the new blind out of its wrappings. What looks easy on the “how to do it” video turns out to be a real pain in the arse. Eventually I achieve the three satisfying clicks as the retaining brackets slot into place. Some tinkering and the securing of the chain loop and the blind i operational. A quick Hoover through and the office is finally finished.
There was more stuff to put away but I had a moment to read the installation instructions for the new built in micro wave that was delivered in the morning. To say the instructions were minimal would be an understatement. There are five pictures and a single paragraph in strange English, mostly about having a professional do it because anyone else is likely to kill themselves! I inspect our existing set up and partially unpack the new unit. I clear the area around the installation area and recognise that the power wiring is the biggest challenge. I recognise I am tired and make the decision to do the installation tomorrow when I am not tired.
I take a beer and time to read a letter from a friend in Scotland. Its a lovely letter, thoughtful and intelligent. Its soon tea time and we eat as a family in front of the TV and half watch Strictly Come Dancing whilst trying to select a new rug for the dining area that matches the new colour scheme. All evening we sit on phones looking at options. Nothing pleases everyone and so we go on looking. It reaches a point of being futile so I start to write the blog. During the day I get various WhatsApp messages from friends all sorting out Christmas or hospital issues. I get pictures of my grandchildren in Sweden enjoying the felt Christmas tree and stick on decorations that we sent them as a pre Christmas activity. It seems that there are pockets of Christmas joy breaking out all over the place. Once the decorating is over then we can get to putting up our tree and decorations. I receive the date for my next oncologist appointment for early February, of course its a phone call, no face to face of course. All I need now is my scan dates.
Tomorrow I will fit the new microwave and find some thinking time to consider what I am going to contribute to the work meeting on Monday, an epic of a meeting on Teams for about six hours.
Friday starts slowly with coffee in bed. The decorators arrive and as they get to hanging wallpaper I get to checking my e-mails and the other phone messages. Amongst them a message from the ombudsman and her final statement and decision on our claim that arose out of our Jamaican adventure when my kidneys packed up. Basically she confirmed the initial conclusion by her office staff, so we will never recover the money we lost through an insurance company that reneged on their promise to pay the repatriation costs in full. So we will be awarded a small sum for the inconvenience and poor services we received adn that will be it as once the ombudsman has pronounced the outcome is legally binding on all parties with no appeal. So that chapter closes.
I get up and bumble through the morning eating a quick bowl of rabbit food and organising things like a to do list. In effect I keep myself out of the way and find myself just waiting for the decorators to finish for the day. I get a message from a friend who is having a small but painful procedure to her face today as she waits in the hospital. There is a break and then more messages post op as she recovers. Later in the day the anesthetic wears off and the pain sets in. Someone else not having a fun day but getting through.
The day drifts a little until I ring my sister to tell her that DPD are delivering her Christmas parcel from us. A call with my sister is always interesting and this one was as well. It did not last as long as usual as she had an appointment to attend. The morning continued to drift until I get a call from a friend and I have a welcome conversation with her about the how the real world is going. During this time the guy who comes and tidies the garden arrived and set about planting bulbs and clearing away the debris.
The day goes on and the decorators pack up for the day at about lunchtime. The kitchen and the dining are done leaving just the library room and the hall to do next week. I eagerly go to see what the newly finished areas look like. I go, I see and I am mightily pleased.
The afternoon goes down hill as there is a message that tells me a friend has been taken to hospital after a stroke. I am taken aback but before I can process this news we learn that my partners mother who is in hospital with a broken leg has now tested COVID positive. Another fact to add to the growing backpack of issues to be carried. I have a zoom call with a friend and talk about work and our respective Christmas plans and the effect COVID is gong to have. To stick to the rules or not, either way we were both expecting there to be a third COVID spike post Christmas.
By the time the household gets to the end of the working day everyone just wants to sit and stare into space for while. Of course in this modern era we stare at our phones and source a mirror for the bedroom. Having satisfied something or other we feast on fish and chips and settle down to watching The Prestige, a really good film. I settle down to write the blog and plan tomorrow. In theory a new microwave is coming, which I shall wrestle with either before or after I put up the new blind in the office. After that it is a matter of putting all our displaced stuff back into some sort of order. I foresee the biggest issues being the decisions about what art work goes back up, what gets stored and what new stuff gets put up. By the end of the weekend it will be time to fill the hippobag.
Thursday and its 8 o’clock and I am handed coffee and a bacon sandwich in bed! The painting elves are taking over the kitchen and the dining area to day so I am being fed pre elves arrival. I get up and dress, take drugs and organise my day in the back bedroom. I do a bit of editing of a paper a colleague and I have in preparation. I get a call from a friend who is waiting for her local post office to open at ten and we chat about our days to come. At ten she gets in to the post office and I go to my first Zoom meeting of the day and spend an hour and a half with colleagues sorting out content for another meeting on Monday. We have modeled it on scrooge with me being the Christmas of enabling environments in the future. It means I can make up any old rope and spin it how I want. I have a sense that people just want to get to Christmas and beyond.
I get a pleasant surprise of a chicken and stuffing roll from our local take away cafe as it is during these COVID days. There is not a lot of time before I am busy again hosting an open forum. I enjoy this time talking to people about how they are coping with being managers during the COVID pandemic. It seems to me that people have acquired a whole new skill set of service management in pandemic that have become grafted onto their ordinary management skills. I wish some how we could find a way to recognise this.
Time to train, I cannot get to the garage to use the rower so its back to the shed for me and the cycle. I have decided that I will train when it is light and when it is winter. I get on board the bike and give it as good as I can for an hour. Over the hour it gets dark, rains and the temperature drops. The painting elves tip toe away under the cover of dark. I return to the house and set about having a shower. It stops and tells me that I have low water pressure just at the point my hair is well lathered along with 70% of my body. I prowl down stairs wrapped in a towel to the boiler to find it is working perfectly and stomp back to the bathroom and swear at the shower. It then works perfectly. I finish my shower and spray myself with Calvin Klein and start to tidy some of the house. In doing so I find our first Christmas card. A creation from one of my nephews son ( I do not know what these are called in the scheme of family relatives.) and we love it.
I potter around while my partner cooks dinner and I sort out the laptop TV combo that will let me watch football. We find to time to rehang some curtains at the window on the stairs. I eat and watch. After 30 minutes I am looking at rugs on my partners i-pad. 2 nil up and with five minutes to go we buy a new lounge rug. My partner retreats to the bath and I write the blog. By tomorrow we hope the decorators will have finished all but one room and the rest of the hall way. At the moment we have glimpses of what the final look will be, we await the wallpaper.
We glimpse the future, tomorrow we will see it revealed fully. Until then there is a kitchen to clear and sleep to be had.
Wednesday and I get up before 8 o’clock and feeling brighter than I have done over the last couple of days and with a mission to send the parcels I taped up yesterday. So I get myself a bacon bagel and set about using a carrier app on my phone to arrange for my parcels to go. In a few minutes of form filling on my phone and making a credit card payment the result is that barcodes appear on my phone. I drive to my closest pick up shop and I enter into a science fiction moment when I wave my phone with strange square patterns at a man who waves a hand held box at my phone, hands me two numbers and says thank you. I drive off slightly unsure what has just gone on but trust that everything will go well. When I used to have money and handed to people in exchange for goods I felt I knew what I was doing. I understood this was a system of trust, the trust that universally money of whatever kind could be exchanged for goods ay understandable rates. In effect this system of trust was, and maybe still is, universal. My trust that my twenty pound notes would be accepted for groceries was/is exactly the same process by which a terrorist buys weapons. Any way now I juggle numbers in cyberspace and the world moves. Somewhere “my money” sits on a server under the sea or underground in a desert. Lets hope no one switches the power off.
Back home the decorators, who are like a band of elves, are busy wallpapering the lounge and painting the utility area. In fact they have sneaked into the kitchen and begun to paint the ceiling. I retreat to the back bedroom and set up my computer and get ready for my morning meeting. My meeting is full of bright and caring people with ideas and questions, none of us are sure why we are there but we are working on it. That and what it all means.
By lunchtime we are picnicking in the lounge as the elves have taken the kitchen over and turning it blue. I read the paper, do the crosswords and then I get a grip on myself and give myself a good talking to. Its been 18 days since I trained. In those 18 days at least five people have told me that they have read my blog and really admire how I keep training and fighting. I feel I have let myself go, let myself down and all those people who back me. I change into my training gear and head for the shed. Its bloody cold as I climb up on the bike and get to pedaling. I always do the first ten minutes with a training mask on to try and up my lung efficiency. A demanding first ten today. I get to the end of the hour and rapidly get back into the house with its now functioning heating on. The kitchen has turned blue, stunningly so and I like it. The elves have left. I go for a shower feeling the relief of having had training. Feeling brave I weigh myself. 96.3 kilos. I am obese again. I am crushed at the effect of not training for 18 days so I set myself the goal of getting below 95 again and not being obese for Christmas.
By now my family are replacing holiday memorabilia back on our “travel shelf”, its a team effort until I get bored and order three biryani for tea. While we wait for them to arrive I work out how the new office blind gets fitted and the rest of the family clear the dining area. The curries arrive and we pile plates high and watch TV until distracted enough to start searching for a new rug for the lounge. I think the search is doomed after the first fifty. I take to the blog and try to make sense of it all, but end up with a could do better list. Tomorrow I have meetings and an open forum to host. Most important of all is to train and try to keep a sense of balance. I no longer have a place in this house to call my own, my office gone to the person who needs it most, so now a shall shed and sofa surf. A modern day Diogenes and to quote him “No man is hurt but by himself”
A torrid night as I try to bake myself well and stop the shivering. For the first time since I was 14 do I wear clothes in bed (what a strange habit that is), as I crank up the electric blanket. I feel as if I am suffering from hypothermia and I think that my body has responded with shock to my 28 day injection. Certainly my bodies response to the injections is getting more acute. At the same time my hands are becoming more cramped and stiff and my legs occassional pain me. But last night the focus was on trying to get warm and to stop shaking. In essence I was baking myself. I was expecting to end up having hot sweats but it did not happen I just gradulaly warmed through and dozed fitfully during the night. In the morning at 8 o’clock I notice my partner was not there and had got up to go to work. The next time I notice anything it is gone 11:30. I guess I had a sleep debt to make up an my body needed to recover some strength.
I get up and eat the last remains of my partners chocolate birthday cake and drink coffee to give me something in my stomach to take my drugs on. I retreat to the back bedroom to stay out of the way of the decorators and read a lovely christmas card and letter from my old mentor. I call a colleague whose call I had missed in the morning and chatted about work, football and home improvements. It would seem that we are not the only ones making home improvements during the COVID. I set about packing the christmas parcels that need to be sent and wrapping the outstanding presents. It takes a while and takes a heavy toll on my duct tape collection but it is worth it. Tomorrow I shall go to the nearest post office that can take this size of parcel as the local village one can only handel parcels up to two kilos, Ah the joys of rural life.
While tea is being cooked by my partner I set about getting rid of the cardboard mountain that has accumulated in the hall way. Its recycling day tomorrow and a chance to clear the decks. Tea is taken in the lounge as the decorators have almost completed the redecoration apart from two wallpaper panels. I watch a football match because by now I am running out of energy. Then its time to blog, although when in this state I do not feel very articulate, it maybe a combination of injection recovery and general COVID confinment. It frustrates me as I become unable to express what I want to with any cogent sense.
