Saturday and I wake after a reasonable nights sleep to find my partner already preparing to go out in to the deep frost. I check my socials and my messages and then with a burst of will power I get up and get into my training kit. Breakfast is a giant buttery crumpet and hot water accompanied by my morning meds. After a short procrastination I head for the garage and the rowing machine. It’s 0 degrees, freezing in other words, I do not think I have ever trained in such cold conditions, at least not since I first joined the cancer club. I use a training App to monitor my exercise activity and general fitness called Zepp and today I want to tip over the 200 PAI (Personal Activity Intelligence) points. This is an App that monitors and calculates all sorts of things and claims that those people who keep their PAI above 100 live longer by about five years, based on a Norwegian University of Science and Technology study that has been going on for 35 years and based on a sample size of 230,000 adults. It is called the HUNT study and is lead by Professor Ulrik Wisloff at the faculty of Health and Medicine Sciences.

My only concession to the cold is long socks, apart from that I am wrapped up in my usual read track suit with my ear buds in to listen to radio to keep me going during the session. I set the session for 45 minutes and set off in the freezing cold. Despite some entertaining radio this is a hard session and it feels like I am having to pull harder than usual just to keep going, perhaps the cold weather is affecting the rower, I do not know so just get on with it. As I get towards the end of the session I can feel myself loosing energy quickly and have to make an effort to get to the end of the session. When I check the monitor I find I have managed 8+kilometres, which is a surprise given how my body feels.

I get out of the garage quickly and into the warm of the house pleased my session is over. I grab a red bull and record my session in my journal. My partner is still at the hairdressers so I clear the kitchen and then hoover round the house to try and make sure the rest of the day can be lazy for everyone. Just as I finish my partner returns and goes off to shop for food at our favourite garden centre. In her absence I watch the first half of a football match and then shower at half time before watching the rest of the game. I have very few if any meaningful spoons left to spend this day so I take to drafting the blog whilst listening to Radio 3’s Mindful Mix. It is still only mid afternoon and the light is beginning to fade so it must be getting close to the time for a slab of Panettone and some writing and reflection time.

The evening rocks round, my team Brentford loose in the third round of the cup to a lower division team, so not a good result at all. There is an evening meal and a TV football match after which more of Blindspot before I take my night meds and go to bed hoping for a good nights sleep before my intended rest day of a Sunday. I might even get to go and feed the duck tomorrow.

Freezing Friday and I wake to messages and social media. I take my vitals which are all good and slowly get up. I find my household sitting on the sofa watching the news and I soon join them with comforting crumpets and morning meds. With breakfast out of the way I have time to update my vitals Excel data base so I can keep track of my blood pressure averages over chemo cycles. So far the last two cycles since my “heart fiasco” have been normal so I am content. I will be happy if things stay as they are till my next oncology review in early March. My partner and eldest daughter go out and leave me to start the daily draft of the blog.

My day progresses to writing the first letters of the year. It is an important moment of the year for me as keeping up my letter writing as a way of staying in touch with friends I value and care about is big issue for me. At the moment my Dupuytrens Contracture makes using my favoured pen and ink tricky so I have resorted to typing using a script font. Its not the same but it does add the additional factor of readability to my letters at the moment. There are some household chores to do but I soon return to the key board and continue to write. All the while I listen to Radio 3s mindfulness selection. Its so refreshing to just have gently music on in the back ground, not lift music or caned music but proper classical music that has been toiled over and thought about. No adverts, opinions, no extraneous noise just music that does not try to force its way into my ears. I seal my letter using some of the sealing wax I received as a Christmas present. Before venturing out into the bitter cold where the streets where still white with frost I layered up and made sure I was as warm as could be. I made my way to the post box and back without mishap.

Once home set about the days crosswords, some tricky stuff in them today so it took me longer to work through them, but I eventually came out triumphant. having nibbled Panettone along the way. My mind turned to the evening meal and on having explored the possibilities I was off to the village shop to get potatoes for jacket potatoes because this is the sort of weather that is just perfect for them.

So the evening is a rough and ready meal and then there is a TV quiz show to watch and then some football before I can finish off drafting the blog, take my evening meds and get to bed ready for the weekend. I’m still stunned by yesterdays review of my poems in the Lancet, its going to take a while for this to work off.

Thursday and I have another good nights sleep, so I am feeling quite chipper as I wake up and check my news feeds, messages and socials. I’m up and in my training gear before a crumpet breakfast and then its off to the garage. Its 2 degrees and a bit nippy. I set the session for 45 minutes and crack on. It is hard work but I get to the end mercifully quickly as I’ve got bloody Jeremy Vine in my ears. The session is not a PB but it has warmed me up.

I am pleased that I am managing to get to train again, there were months when it was not possible without pissing blood ,it was a major source of distress, so this run of being able to train is a real blessing. I record the session in my journal and then recover with the last piece of Christmas cake and some Lucozade. As I have changed out of the training kit I have another twenty minute session with my partners eye sauna whilst listening to one of radio threes relaxation sessions. Life cannot be all here and now relaxation so I gird up my loins and set about clearing the kitchen and emptying the dishwasher and getting it ready for whatever action it is going to see later. The secretary of the surgeon who is going to do my Dupuytrens contractor operation rings me back and says she has seen the quote that the private hospital has sent me, and that the other private hospital is sending me a better deal on the understanding that my after care will be extra from a specialist hand and wrist Occupational Therapist. It is a bizarre feeling having hospitals price matching and in effect touting for my sickly business. So I now await new paper work to accept the new offer and my January 30th hand job. Probably not the best way to describe it.

With the med admin done I set about checking the car tyres on the cars and making sure the pressures are up to speed. Its not complicated it just means jiggling about with the portable compressor. Fortunately our little compressor is quite bright so that once the desired pressure is set it gets on with the job and stops when the pressure is right. It neatly runs off the cigarette lighter port on the car. With the job done and the pressure measuring dust caps back on the tyres I retreat inside to the warmth of the lounge intending to write letters but instead I find myself reviewing the poems I’ve written lately and then with a Red Bull and Crunchie bar I start to write. Its a strange feeling, once I start there is no stopping it, it just gets going and I have to see it through, so I end up writing two.

426
Fuck me I am addicted to Crunchies
Chocolate covered honeycomb
A blast from my childhood
come back to haunt my adulthood.
Once big enough to satisfy 
but now a weedy runt of a bar
the cunning confectioner 
sells them in multi packs,
one for now and now 
and now and now. 
I could walk away 
I could honestly 
because I know 
that down the aisle
Frys Turkish Delight 
lays in wait.
This poem cost me a Crunchie,
my conscience a smidgeon
of guilt.
Compared to my 
 other sins 
it’s a pleasure, 
especially when washed 
down with a 
Red Bull,
diet of course!

							426 09-01-2025 

427
I idly read my last clutch of poems 
and I see that cancer is not there,
have I become complacent,
a host with Stockholm syndrome?
It is true I am in awe 
Of its fabulous cell chemistry,
Its ability to find a way,
Of how molecules stiffen,
bridges become rigid 
and the constant flux of 
what washes through me
as pill after potion is tried.
The measure of my metastases
by noisy magnetic tubes,
wonderous machines, 
my only arithmetic of life. 
For much of my time 
I feel a fraud and think 
“I should do better”,
be more fun, more adventurous.
Be the partner, lover, 
I once was, and then:
then fatigue catches up with me,
my mental to do list 
outstrips my available spoons,
my energy gone 
and I sit on the recliner
trying my very best to
feed my brain 
to retaliate and be something.
My friend said:
“he needs to be seen” 
as I put poetry into the world
and seek the words 
that will encapsulate
me before its too late. 
Much of this life is mundane,
a routine, trying
to remain,
a life, unseen, new terrain
but it is a life,
and I cling to it,
for family, friends and 
the endless wonders
that it brings.
It is a revel of the ordinary 
amidst the exceptional,
a celebration of unique
ordinariness,
and I love it. 

							427  09-01-02025
 

I just about get to the end of my musings and I realise the night has arrived, winter night has gone quickly black and I turn my attention to drafting the blog for the day. The website analysis that comes with platform that I use gives me surprising information , apparently people from all over the world have a look from time to time, which might explain the spikes that occur now and again in the visitor and visit figures. Strangely the most views come from Hong Kong, America, Russia and from places like Mongolia. There are of course some European ones. Clearly people stumble over me in there browsing I hope they find the experience comprehendible, it must be a baffling experience for many or just plain boring and easily swiped by. No one ever leaves a message or comment so I assume they pass through and leave us family to get on with things. Either that or the traffic analysis I am getting from my platform provider is just plain wrong.

Tonight I am not sure what I shall do, there is no football to watch and I am tiring of Blindspot. Perhaps this is to be a reading night. What I do know is that tomorrow needs to be a letter writing day, even a Shed day. I have bought my annual correspondence diary and await its arrival so I need to get going on writing my first letters of 2025 to all my correspondents and recipients. It feels important that I do this as I have not seen many of my friends for what feels far to long already and I miss them.

STOP PRESS:

I have just discovered that my first book of poetry The Cancer Years: So Far was reviewed in the Lancet Oncology section! No one asked me or contacted me but here it is, I am flabbergasted!

The Lancet Dec 2024

Volume 25Number 12p1507-1676, e617-e704

The Cancer Years: So Far (Book Marketeers, 2024) is the first publication from Roland T Woodward, a retired chartered forensic psychologist who, since being diagnosed with metastatic prostate cancer, has posted a regular blog that reflects on living with his incurable disease. A raw and powerful collection of poems, the self-described compilation of “light and wonder” gave Woodward an outlet for all the feelings of loneliness, fear, and defiance that cancer provokes. Woodward’s candid poems reveal the day-to-day emotions of a man who feels the helplessness of his condition and repeatedly rallies against it. The first poem in the collection, numbered 335, portrays that helplessness. With its speaker declaring that “Nothing now is real”, 335 laments that when living with cancer, the world “no longer gives us meaning”. A few pages later, number 339 expresses that life is like “sitting by the pool” with “No sun | No waves | No laughing children | Or ice cream cones”. However, the end of the poem signifies the shift to resistance that Woodward upholds through the rest of his collection: “This is where, in my woolly, | I make my stand”. The poems that follow depict a shared and vulgar defiance towards the prostate cancer that Woodward refuses to let rule his life—as the speaker declares in number 348, “don’t expect me to be nice about it”. Woodward offers readers an empowered position towards illness that they may find hard to come by on their own. Number 349, a poem that considers Woodward’s struggle for meaning and value in a world that “holds no interest”, ends with a sharp expletive aimed at the disease. At the extreme, number 355 takes a traditional English sonnet and fills it exclusively with expletives and the word “Cancer”. By embracing his resistance and challenging his disease, Woodward can reconnect with his own identity and realise the value that can be found in life when he is in control, not his physical condition; and, by proxy, he offers this method of resistance to his readers.

What can I say?

Wednesday and I appear to have slept deeply waking only once in the night which is very rare for me. No time to do the vitals, just time to check my messages and socials before getting up and dressed ready to take myself out for breakfast. I walk to the village shop and stock up on crumpets and a daily paper and move onto the local pub that now serves as a café during the day. I order eggs Benedict and a hot chocolate minus the crap on top and settle down to read more of Charles G Lauder Jr’s The Aesthetics of Breath. As I sit and read I enjoy spotting the local references that he makes and the fact that they are mixed in with his Texan background. My food arrives and I have the pleasure of good food and good poetry all at one time. As I run out of food but not poetry I order a second hot chocolate and sit until both both run out. A good way to spend a morning.

Back home I do the days cross words. They are the easy cross words that I do, requiring little high brow intellectual puzzling skills, nothing like a secret service entry test, but I like to think that it exercises at least some portion of my mind. The goal is always to complete all three without recourse to Google. Sometimes my dyslexia gets in the way as I can deduce what the answer is but have not got a clue about how to spell it. My knowledge outstrips my ability to turn sounds into symbols which is at the heart of my dyslexia especially when using pen and paper, not quite so bad when I am using a keyboard, and some times Spell Check helps or predictive text. Today is a good day and I give myself three big ticks of success. With the crosswords done I prepare to accompany my partner and her brother to see their mother.

I am going as an amateur electrician as the career has sent a picture of a hoover lead with an abrasion, so it needs to be checked. I gather up tools, tapes and a spare Henry just in case before my partners brother picks us up in his nice new car. On the journey we talk cars, in particular the one we are in. It is very nice and has lots of “toys”. I like it, my partner would prefer a smaller car by the same manufacturer. We arrive at the mother in laws and while my partner and her brother are visiting and doing what business needs to be done with the career I set about inspecting the abraded wiring on the Hoover (other cleaners are available). My inspection is thorough and I conclude that it is only the out cable layer that has been slightly damaged, the current carrying wires are in tact. I use insulation tape as a first layer to repair the outer layer and then overlay it with a heavier duty duct tape to give it a smooth finish. Job done, I test the cleaner and it works just fine so I join the others in the lounge where we chat beds ands and TV. I take a call from a friend who calls me on the fly as she dives from one task to another on her busy to do list on her way to collect her children from school. After our fleeting the call the career asks if I could look at the upstairs shower as it is not working. The ceiling mains switch is an odd configuration, however I work it out and after a couple of goes the power returns to the shower unit and it starts to work. An easy win.

Not long after my shower victory we are all back in the car returning home through the growing gloom of the evening. Once home I start to draft the blog and think about putting all the tools I had taken with me back in their allotted places, while my partner starts to prepare the evening meal. I respond to an email that is the cost of my planned operation for my Dupuytrens Contracture operation. I have to leave a message as the secretary to whom I am to respond is away from her phone. The evening is with us and I am growing tired already so I suspect I will seek something to read or some TV that requires little of me. Its been a day of normality really, leaving the house, reading, attending to family business, again out of the house, it feels a kind of useful, engaged day. Ordinary but important. I perhaps need more of these. At the back of my mind cancer nags and mutters that I do not get off the hook that easily, the fight goes on and on and on and on and on and on and on.

Its Tuesday the 7th of January 2025, the fifth anniversary of me and Rocket finishing my first round of Chemotherapy. I survived minus hair and as I walked out of the chemo delivery ward I gave the survivors bell a cold stare and passed it by, I knew then, as I know now that getting through those six cycles was just the start of a long, bitter and draining struggle. Plenty of people get to ring the bell and die pretty soon afterwards, this guy was not for the rituals but for the reality. I ‘m still here and I am still standing and I intend to be in five years time.

I go through my usual pre-rising routine of checking my vitals and my socials. My vitals are good and my socials inconsequential so I get up and get my training gear on. Down stairs I pause to take my morning meds and get my ear buds wedged, then its off to the garage. Its 3 degrees but I set myself up for an hours row. This is a big anniversary and deserves a big push. I set off at eleven in my sunglasses to avoid the annoying slit of sun that comes over the top of the garage door and just keep going through the inane chatter adn music of Radio 2. By the time noon comes up I’m flagging but I have got over the 11 kilometre mark and shed over 700 calories. First hour session of the year, there are many more to come.

I get out of the cold garage and record the session in my journal and for a while to rest. When I am ready I go to the kitchen to make myself the desired crumpet breakfast only to find that they had all been eaten by the rest of the household. So for me its a toasted bagel. I am eager to get to my journal I have a line in my head that came to me when I was rowing and combined itself with something a friend said about me when I last met a group of friends to eat together. It takes a while to get the ink to flow but eventually I get to something that feels right.

425

My poems are the whore house
of words.
Driven by desire 
to be seen as I sink.
Bought and paid for 
like a funereal mass.
A vanity that is all, 
can’t help myself.
These are fleeting pleasures,
more masochistic
bound up in knots
and thrashed out
to divert time
and compensate for
what’s been lost.
I’ll hang about 
on literatures street corner
showing a bit of ankle,
not brave enough 
for full on
tits and teeth,
until there are 
no more punters,
no tricks to turn.
I shall lounge
in the snug bar
of the last saloon
wrecked and waiting,
deserted by my pimp
and idly scribbling
on the back of
beer mats
and wondering if
there are benefits 
for this old 
slag.

							452 07-01-2025

Having got to the end of writing there was some poem admin to be done to get the last few in the right order. Having a shower is my next priority but once again I have to prime the shower as I get a few low pressure messages before I can get on with my shower. It takes a while to get my hair dry enough to dress and then spend 20 minutes under my partners eye sauna. Feeling quite chipper I return to the lounge with a drink and settle down to read another of the poetry collections that I was given at Christmas. This collection is by the chair of the south Leicestershire Poetry Stanza, Charles G Lauder Jr who is a Texan who moved to England in 2000. His first collection is called The Aesthetics of Breath and published in 2019 in England, so he feels like an honorary Brit. I like his poetry and has a very southern states drawl to it and that deep south politeness which is really charming.

I am happy reclining and reading the poetry when I get a call from my gas fitter who tells me that he cannot do the repairs on the gas fire as the parts are not available. His advice is to ring the manufacturers. I put aside the poetry and ring the company and get nothing but bad news, model is obsolete, spare parts, obsolete, fire obsolete, the upgrade package is obsolete and no longer available, bottom line, I’m fucked, the fire is only 13 years old, says it all about commerce. I check websites for spares but nothing useful is available, so it means replacing the gas fire we have, so in a last desperate act I email the company to ask if a new model will fit into the same space as the old Model 1. I await the response.

The evening arrives as does the evening meal. With that out of the way I once again return to the recliner and start to draft the blog. I am almost out of spoons so look to TV for relief, there is Blindspot, Silent Witness and football to choose from before I take my night meds and look towards sleep. So far I seem to be managing my 28 jab quite well, I think making the effort to row for an hour has helped.

Monday, Jab Monday. I wake to see snow and sleet outside and prepare to do my Nanook of the North impression, getting up taking my partner tea and then putting on several layers, finished off with my prison anorak, grippy boots and Shark gloves. Having taken my morning meds I walk down to the GP surgery. In a very short time I am called in by my usual nurse who is very chatty and business like. She hunts around my right lower gut area trying to find a non lumpy bit to inject into to me. She pinches a bit of my fat and goes in. The injection takes a while but then it is done and I am sporting a fluffy cloud of cotton wool and tape. I put all my layers back in order and wish her a merry cheerio.

As I am out and about I walk to the village shop and buy a paper and more crumpets, which I have taken a liking to recently. Once home I am out of my boots and anorak and toasting crumpets for breakfast. As I have a paper I set about doing the three daily crosswords, two are relatively straight forward but the third one proves to be sticky. Eventually I crack it and feel chuffed that I got there on my own, no google. With my social media and messages checked I move on to domestic tasks, which includes putting tonight’s meal in the crock pot. I am doing a version of chicken and chorizo with mixed herbs, a chicken stock based source with white wine and brandy. Its all a matter of luck how these meals turn out, depending on what is in the fridge on any given day. I found some of the worlds smallest parsnips in the fridge so they have gone in almost whole, something I’ve not done before, so it remains to be seen if the whole thing works or not.

With the kitchen cleared I am beginning to feel my post jab shivers starting so I take myself off to the lounge and settle down to read Tomas Transtromer’s collected poems entitled The Half Finished Heaven. This was a gift from my son in Sweden in response to my request for Swedish poetry for Christmas. I spend all afternoon reading the collection and about him. His poetry is direct and clear, which I like but unfortunately I nod off a couple of times, a result of getting up early and the jab, not the quality of the poetry. Tomas Transtromer is a Noblel Prize winner who died in 2015 and well know in Sweden, I’d never heard of him. The translation is by Robert Bly an American and what caught my eye is that there is a book of Transtromer’s and Bly’s correspondence over some twenty six years before Transtromer had a stroke. I suspect I shall seek it out as I am always interested in letter writers and people who stay in correspondence with each other.

I should perhaps mention that Transtromer was a psychologist who spent many years of his life working with young offenders, it is perhaps this similarity in us that draws me to his work. This a collection that I shall read again. My partner returns from the gym and joins me to read in the lounge as I start to draft the blogs. Tonight she will have her singing lesson and I will fight off the shakes from my injection. As I draft this I can feel myself getting shivery and nibble Croccantini to keep my blood sugar up and of course for comfort. Croccantini are thin hazelnut biscuits dipped in chocolate, very moreish.

So the plan is to keep warm, eat the crock pot meal, watch something mindless on TV, take my meds and have an early night in the hope that I will sleep okay. The first night after my 28 day jab tends to be a bit of a battle as the injection site gets sore and my shivers get more pronounced. My best line of defence is to be kind to myself and to take paracetamol.

Saturday and I am awake and aware that I need to get to the chemist to pick up my drugs from the chemist. So I am up and into my fleecy trousers and my partner and I stroll down to the village where I pop into the chemist while my partner raids the co-op for a paper and crumpets. The chemists is busy but despite my having ordered my drugs four days ago I still have to wait while the team rummage around to find my order, in fact it is clear they are doing it on the fly as they retrieve my injection from a delivery box. Eventually they hand me my paper bag with my drugs. My partner and I walk home to have breakfast.

Having acquired my drugs I set about filling my drugs wallets for the next two weeks, an easy but fiddly job as my Viking finger restricts my hand motility. I try to get my sofa end organised and cleaned before the midday football match on TV. To be frank the day becomes a sports fest as I drift from football to rugby until there are no more matches and it becomes a food and drama series evening. I am acutely aware that tomorrow is 12th night which means that I shall be taking the decorations down and packing them away till next year. With the household gone to bed I take a moment to thank all the tree baubles, drops, angels, and animals for there sterling work this year. Of course there is a special word to Red Sonia who has topped the tree excellently again this year, a legend in the household and has been for years now. With my thank yous done I take my night meds and go to bed.

Sunday and there is snow, thin measly Leicestershire snow, but nevertheless snow. Its clearly not going to last long not like the swathes of the white stuff up north and to the west of us. It is a strange truth that Leicestershire has less severe weather than the rest of the country. Being so central the worst of all the weather fronts seem to peter out before they reach Leicestershire, so if we are having really bad weather someone else is having appalling weather. So as I look at the light dusting that is already melting my mind turns to taking down the Christmas tree decorations.

So after breakfast and getting the shower to work for my partner I catch up with the blog and my social media. It is 28 jab day tomorrow but it looks like there should be no problem getting to the GP surgery to have it. As a precaution I retrieve my winter waterproof boots from the boot of the car. With my precautionary things done I get up into the loft and retrieve the Christmas decoration storage boxes and so the great de-decorate begins. Every bauble, drop, angel, animal and gets wrapped in tissue and popped into their appropriate shoe box, while the Prague dolls and the light up rabbit and reindeer get stored in their boxes. Due to the visit of the youngest grandchild this year we did no put out the nativity, next year it will be safe to do so, so this year “God in a box” remained just that.

The lights get their own set of boxes and finally it all get returned to the loft packed in storage crates, which just leaves the tree to be dismantled and re-boxed. It was a very wise decision to buy a good quality false tree last year. Look good and can be adjusted to fit the space we have. Boxed up the tree awaits return to the garage. All of this has taken the day with one short break to watch the majority of a televised rugby match. So the evening meal arrives and then a quiet evening of staying warm and preparing for tomorrows 28 day jab.

I suppose I should take time to reflect upon the year but as Tuesday is the fifth anniversary of my completion of chemotherapy I suspect I should take a longer view of my situation. My actual time living with my cancer is months longer but surviving the chemo seems to be an important landmark. The actual experience of that initial chemo was a scary one. There was so much bad press around chemo, and it was often reinforced by the nursing staff, I remember the urologist who gave me my cancer diagnosis and my Gleason score who said ” your be okay, your strong”, and so I was. I think I was very lucky in that I never suffered the nausea that many people do. My hair falling out and the physical bloating of my body was difficult to cope with. Once out of chemo and my hair started to recover I swore I would not cut my hair again given that the expectation for a man of my age with a Gleason score of 9.5 was, with successful chemo was 26 months. Here I am five years on with hair down to the middle of my back. A great deal has happened in those five years and I wonder if I have spent them wisely, but the real challenge is whether I can spend the next five years as interestingly.

Hurray the first Friday of 2025 and the weather is holding. I wake to find my partner has gone to work, downstairs to the office, so I get on with my getting up ritual like taking my vitals, all good, checking my social media, checking the news, and seeing if there is anything I need to organise today. It takes a while but I get the basic LifeMin out of the way early. When I finally get out of bed I have a to do list and a plan. Today its straight into my training kit, take my morning meds and head for the garage and the faithful rower. The rower must be one of the best investments I ever made. Its cold, 3 degrees cold so I strap in and get going thinking that I am likely to be jaded having trained yesterday, but to my surprise at the end of the session I had done more than 6 kilometres in my 30 minutes.

I stay in my gear as record the session and then set about some pre weekend jobs that need doing. First is to compact the waste bins, dur to missing a recycling run the bins have got full so I grab my tamping bar and set to work on the wheelie bins. In no time at all they are sorted, general waste now has space enough for a couple of bags and the garden waste can have its lid closed. A very satisfying outcome. Then its onto the light over the range that is set into the extractor hood. I rummage through my bits and pieces bags and find a spare glass for it, the old one being broken. There is then a period of cathartic curding and swearing until I get the damn thing fitted back in with a new bulb. Ta Da! Once again there is light, damn me I am good at times. I take a break adn find a supplier of the small round glass down light fronts and order some spares as I am going to need them for the lights over the kitchen window. I make sure the light in question all have new bulbs but alas they still won’t work. Nothing for it but to ring the electrician and ask if he come and do it. So he is coming next week now.

My partner makes bacon sandwiches for lunch and I crack on to my next task. I try to ignite the gas fire in the lounge, the one we have just had serviced, however it will not play ball. I test the batteries, all good, and the battery circuit, also all good, so I ring the gas fitter and ask him to get back to me so that we can either fix it or up grade the guts of the appliance. With all this out of the way its time for a shower before I can settle down to do todays crosswords. I am clearly on form as I flash through them today and I am soon filling in the family planner for 2025 with all my jab dates and family birthdays. I cruise into the evening to draft the blog, eat tea and then hopefully there is a rugby match to watch on TV before I do the last minute adjustments to tomorrows Tesco order. I had a late night last night so I am hopping to get my meds down me early and have an early night, as I need to be up early to get my monthly drugs from the chemist in the morning. It has come round to 28 day jab time again on Monday so I need for my jab to be available. Of course Sunday is 12th night so the decorations will need to come down, so that will see me busy for the pre jab day.

Thursday and its the second day into the new year, icy but bright. My partner has gone to work so I drop into my old routine of doing my vitals and checking my socials before getting up. My vitals are good and all my messages are friendly, long time since I was trolled. So I take my time getting into the world but when I do I get into my training gear. I do not feel fully recovered from the sore throat and stuff I had over Christmas but a new year has started and I cannot hang around. I get into my training and take my morning meds and head for the garage. Its the coldest its been so far that season, a measly 5 degrees.

As I have not been able to train for 19 days so this is going to be a relatively gently session to get me back in the saddle and used to working my body. I set a session for 30 minutes and hope I can reach about 6 Kilometres. As soon as I take the first pull I know that this is going to be hard work. It amazes me how quickly I loose fitness these days, it only takes a few days off exercise and my body just goes backwards, so getting going again is a real effort. This is one of those really difficult sessions where I cannot get my body into a rhythm and mentally the Dark and Tricky puts in an appearance and tries to inflict a really negative self talk in my brain. I’m having none of it and grind on to the end of the session. I achieve my goal of 6+kilometree, that will do me as a starter for 2025.

Once out of the garage I record the session and then find my new slippers have arrived, the pair ordered that will hopefully stop me tripping up on the stairs. I like them and I like their credentials in terms of greenness.

At last its time to eat but I get distracted when I go to change out of my training gear. I espy my partners new electric eye mask. Having read the manual I choose my heat setting and a 20 minute session, pop them on and I am away. Well I have to say I am very pleasantly surprised. Despite my fears of coddling my eyeballs my eyes and sinus array feel quite chipper.

Having been distracted beyond the irritating Jeremey Vine on the radio I finally get to prepare my lunch. The morning row is catching up with me so as I finish lunch I start to draft todays blog aware that there are bird and squirrel feeders to be filed before the sleety and cold days arrive, there are also the new year letters that I want to write. Last year was a grim year that effected my letter writing so I am hoping to be back in my Shed soon once again writing regularly to my correspondents.

The afternoon is spent listening to a football match before I cook a chicken curry for the evening meal. With the basics out of the way I settle into the evening. Its an evening of the last ever Vera, followed by the SAS and then the Full Monty before I take my night meds and get to bed. I’m mentally itchy and scratchy at the moment, dissatisfied with myself but I guess as I recover fully I can get get back to some sort of normality.

Wednesday the 1st of January 2025 sees me waking late after my Hootenanny indulgences of champagne and annual dose of Ruby Turner. I finally get up to make warm drinks for my partner and myself having made no new year resolutions at all. A very late breakfast ensues after which I decide to play with my new drone. After watching the manufactures video during which they used phases like “push forward make it go upwardly” and ” pull back make it go downwardly” I finally get the thing on indoor mode and ready to go, although it was not immediately quite clear how one started and stopped it but I guessed that unlocking it was a good bet, here is what happened.

Yes it is hilarious, my view is that it was the Chinese trying to kill me and that I had had a lucky escape. I’ve decided to wait until I can complete the outdoor configuration before taking the joy sticks of fate in to my hands again in calm weather. So having safely turned it off I went back to less dangerous things like reading and drafting the blog.

The day went down hill with a roaring headache, so it was paracetamol and sleep for me until the evening when football, Vera and night meds came around and I fled to bed desperate to sleep. This is not an auspicious start to 2025, I think I may have rushed at it a bit to quickly so tomorrow I hope to be more measured.