Thursday and I am a sluggerbed. I wake at 10 o’clock. Again my deepest sleep seems to occur in the early morning once my night meds have worked their way through my system, either that or my body is desperately trying to hibernate. I suspect the later as when I unusually weighed myself once I go tout of bed I found my weight had risen again. If that’s not a body trying to lay down fat for the winter I don’t know what is. Ah I hear you say but winter is here. My argument is that my body is in the same state as my garden: confused. What I am experiencing is a late dash for fat.

I have breakfast and do some life admin including some belated Christmas ordering and then settle down to read. A friend who moved house yesterday messages me from her cardboard city and is happy that she has been shopping for the first time and laid in food so that she and her husband will not starve if the snow traps them in their new home. I decide to read until lunch time when I will walk to the village with my partner and collect my drugs and do some food shopping. I finish my book, I Am David. It is supposed to be a children’s book but I am not sure how a child would take to it or what it would take from it. Its been a best seller since the 1960s and is still in print across Europe so I guess kids are pretty rugged. Mind you there is some rugged modern stuff around, try Hard Candy.

At lunchtime my partner and I walk to the village centre and I try to collect my drugs. My injection has not arrived despite ordering it on Sunday. The world is slowing down. The Christmas cards that were sent the 21st November second class are still turning up, one of them at an address a twenty minute drive from home. My partner and I pick up some food and get ourselves home. I indulge in a newspaper and distribute the varies deliveries that arrive. I spend some time wrapping todays arrivals as I try to keep pace with Christmas admin. Finally it is time to train, I’ve delayed too long already today really but I get changed and get into the garage. Its cold, 5 degrees cold, the coldest so far this year.

I get myself going on my selected one hour session. I am about ten minutes in when a friend calls as she travels to pick up one of her daughters who is not well and needs to be retrieved from school. We chat during her journey about Christmas and the preparations until she arrives at her destination. I return to my rowing and push myself along. It turns out a reasonable session, which I need to repeat for the rest of the training days on the week. I am pleased to have made 12 kilometres and burn off 700+ calories.

At the end of the session I quickly get into the house and record my session in the training/diet journal. My partner cooks tea and I start to draft the blog. During this evening my partner will do her singing lesson and I will watch the final ever episode of Lucifer. I find it difficult to believe that I have watched all 96 episodes. Is this what retirement is for? I think as long as its not the only thing I do its okay. Mind you there are few more series I would have to add the likes of The Witcher and Warrior Nun. I now need to find a new book to read and I really need to write my Christmas letters and beat the postal strikes. However tonight its the end of Lucifer and a relatively early night.

Wednesday and its time to get breakfast down my throat and get my partners car to Kwik Fit (which I’ve finally learned to spell properly.) After an aborted attempt to put more air into the cars poorly front nearside tyre I just jump in and drive, carefully and sensitively and like a responsible adult to Kwik Fit being guided all the way by the wonder of Google maps and a smart phone. I get to the Kwik Fit shop, drive in , park up and give the keys to the small and spotty adolescent apprentice tyre fitter.

Kwik Fit barns are cold with no coffee machines but they do have Wi Fi so I am able to continue to do Christmas shopping. The activity, or lack of it is a wonder to behold as everyone hops from one job to another in between answering phones and looking for stock. Eventually the car gets its new tyres and a quick realignment of its tracking. I pay the realignment fees and drive home to a heroes welcome that included coffee and a bacon bagel.

Having dined it was onto my next project. Its Christmas and that means wrapping. So I retreat to the back bedroom and set about and firstly finding everything that I have squirreled away and then wrapping it. It takes an age, time enough for a quick mid wrapping cold non alcohol beer. Eventually it gets done and there is just the recycling to be done, the hoovering and the tidying up and the returning of the room to a habitable state. With all this done I scuttle to the post office and post off my final Christmas postings. On the way back from the posting I notice the full moon rising over the house, it is awesome and stirs me.

Back home our guest for the night arrives and after a quick chat my partner and her friend go out to eat. I eat soup and start to draft the blog while catching up with the last of the Lucifer series. My evening will cruise to my bed and finally sleep. It feel like I have been busy and neglectful of the people that I write to regularly so tomorrow I shall head to the Shed and try to write some pre Christmas letters. I also need to pick up my training, Rocket does not approve of my slothfulness.

Tuesday and I am up and showered early as today is nuclear medicine day. I have the joys of being injected with radioactive isotope and then being scanned. The ball ache in this is the fact that I have to wait for about two hours between having the isotope and the actual scan. I’ve done all I can to prepare. All the usual things, shower, hair washed, clean underwear, seasonal socks and smellies. I have my usual muesli breakfast, check my social media, emails and messages. As time goes by I think this activity is taking me less time, a kind of social erosion perhaps or maybe I am just coming to my senses. My current focus is on emails telling me that I have parcels on the way. Some I recognise others are a mystery.

At the appointed time I drive to the hospital and make my way to the nuclear medicine department. I book in and then sit in the waiting area reading I Am David. After a short wait a cheery nurse calls me in to the clinic room. The catheter goes into my arm followed by saline and a radioactive isotope. So far so good. I return home and while away the time before I return to the hospital for my 2 o’clock second appointment. I continue to read my book until called in. I lay on the scan bed and soon I am underway as I get slide into the scanner. When in these situations, especially when the camera plate is about three inches from my nose, I try to relax and lightly nap. It takes about 25 minutes to completer the scan after which a technician explains to me that the consultant that is to review my pictures is delayed so I might have a longer wait before I can go home. I return to the waiting area and continue to read. After about half an hour a chap wanders in, calls my name and tells me I can go. The carpark system is a camera and number plate recognition system, which works really well, much better than the old coin system, which was a truly archaic system.

Once home I am beginning to feel tired, so I settle down to watch the afternoons world cup football match. It is a surprise result as Morocco beat Spain in a penalty shootout. I drift through to the evening meal and another football match in a kind of disconnected way, ending with drafting the blog having watched the final episode of Granite Harbour. Tomorrow, I have the job of getting my partners car to Kwikfit to have new tyres put on. I shall need to pump up the front nearside tyre before making the 19-minute dash to the tyre fitters, so it’s going to be an interesting morning. If that goes well, I must do some Christmas wrapping and get one or two things in the post before the postal system goes into strike delays. I need to train hard as well to make up for the last two lost days. It feels like Christmas is not helping. Others have greater things to do such as moving house tomorrow and guiding children through all the school Christmas activities. In comparison my Real World is not that demanding.

Monday and it’s my partners birthday. I make warm drinks to have in bed however my partner is not feeling to chipper. We laze for a while until we both feel in need of breakfast. Having cleared away the kitchen, the washing and tidied up a bit we set about ordering new tyres for my partners car. So by the end of the morning, I am booked in to take the car to our local Kwik Fit on Wednesday to have the car reshod for the winter. Better safe than sorry. I have also booked my next injection for a later time next Monday so that I can take my partner for her hospital investigation in the morning. I also book in my next set of bloods to monitor my PSA. We then get ready to go for a birthday lunch at one of our local pubs.

My partner and I settle at our pub restaurant table and begin a long lunchtime meal. Its slow service but the food is good. I cave in and have a cheesecake pudding and my body cannot believe it is getting something so sugary. We arrive back home just as the first football match starts at the world cup. My partner and I are both full after our meal and it is good just to chill out and watch the football. The match goes to penalties, the first of the championship, which Japan loses appallingly with some of the worst penalties I’ve ever seen. While the game is on my partner’s brother drops by to say happy birthday to my partner. It becomes, cake, card and present time for my partner so we indulge in candle lit chocolate cake, card and present opening. We are just over the cake and coffee when Tesco deliver. Some squirreling and reserve store topping up gets done and we are soon back to watch the final football match of the day. Brazil thrash South Korea while a friend of my partner visits to say happy birthday. Post visit and post football my partner and I settle down to watch a new series.

While the new series sizes up I draft the blog and look at my paperwork for tomorrow’s bone scan. It is one of those procedures that means I will be radioactive for a few hours. I get jabbed with the isotope and then wander around for a couple of hours avoiding pregnant women before returning to be put through the big whizzo nuclear scan machine. It’s not a big deal just time consuming and I have yet to train this week. Time now for night meds and bed.

Sunday and it’s a slow start with a coffee in bed before starting out on the day. Before anything else comes the Sunday weigh in. I step onto the scales and hope for the best. I look down and see 96.0 kilos on the display. It is a decrease from last week, but I am vaguely disappointed. I had hoped to see 59 something but it is proving difficult to lose the weight as quickly as I could when I could train flat out in sessions. This careful training that I am doing to try and avoid passing blood afterwards is limiting my ability to shed weight quickly. Patience is indeed the ability to deal with things when they do not go to plan. I just need to preserver (that’s Rockets job) and to keep looking at what I can do to adapt and how I can be creative in finding new ways to keep fit, lose weight and maintain my strength.

I make a fried egg sandwich for breakfast and get myself ready to take my partner and eldest daughter to the gym. I drop them off and then go shopping. I find disposable turkey baking tins, which are a real boon to our Christmas plans that include a traveling Christmas dinner. I return to the gym and indulge in a hot chocolate while I wait for my family to finish their work outs. We drive home and I squirrel away some of the shopping and get ready to watch another knockout world cup football match. I watch as France beat Poland 3-1 and then set about some chores. I order my monthly drugs and refill my drugs wallets for the coming two weeks. There is just about time for dinner before I settle down to watch England take on Senegal in their first knock out match of the world cup.

England win 3-0. Now for France. Just before the end of the match my partner gets a call to tell her that her mother has had another of one of her turns, so my partner and her brother have gone to see her and to wait for the ambulance. I tidy what I can and then prepare for tomorrow in the hope that things go well. While I wait for news I watch a film and draft the blog.

Saturday and it I wake late to make drinks for my partner and I before we get up for the day. We chat for a while and plan Christmas admin and the “to do” tasks for the weekend. We eventually get up and have a breakfast of bacon sandwiches. It’s time to start in on the stuff to do. Before we can get started, we get both a post-delivery and an Amazon drop so there are things to squirrel away before we can get on with things. We drive to our local garden centre to stock up on veg, fruit and meat. On the way back we stop at the garage, and I do an impromptu lesson on checking and filling the tyres on the car. This was prompted by the low tyre pressure warning light coming on in the car. It turns out that the front nearside tyre was down to 21psi. By the time we got home the bloody low pressure warning light had come on again. Clearly a new job to take care of.

Once home the goodies get unpacked, and I settle down to watch the first knockout match on the World Cup. The rest of the household disappear to start the secret Christmas wrapping. The Netherlands beat the plucky USA team 3-1. It was an average game. Now it’s my turn to be active. I get into my training gear and head for the garage. I’ve decided to do a 45-minute session at my lower level of resistance. I get going and gradually get into my rhythm. In the end the session turns out to be a reasonable one with me having burnt 600+ calories over 9+ kilometres.

I just have time to get my kit off and eat tea before the start of the next match. Argentina versus Australia. Of course, the plucky socceroos were not good enough and the Argentinians end up winning 2-1. I move on to drafting the blog to the TV wallpaper of Midsommer Murders. The day has somehow disappeared and here I am spoonless and looking forward to tomorrow my rest day, not that I will as I have a pile of things to do before the new week kicks in. Tomorrow is the all-important weigh in day. I find this week I have been constantly hungry and craving something sweet, so I am hoping the scales give me good news and a reason to have my once-a-week sweet treat. I feel tired but this is Rocket time and will go being so until my next oncology review in January. Only then will I know if doing what I can control will have any effect on my PSA levels.

Friday and I wake after a fitful night in which I got up at 4:30 and did some more Christmas shopping before returning to bed to sleep till 8 o’clock. I have breakfast and coffee. I clear the kitchen and continue to do Christmas admin. At an odd moment I send one of my nephews and his wife happy anniversary wishes as they speed towards London for a treat. Another friend and her wife are off to the Spa, I begin to think that post training I should indulge in a long warm bath bomb bath. Before anything else I put together tonight’s meal in the crockpot. So, at kick off tonight there will be a chicken and chorizo stew to be eaten. I change into my kit and trudge to the garage to row so that I can earn my treat.

I do a half hour at my normal resistance level. It feels an effort and I wonder if I am just tiring at the end of the weeks training. Anyway, I persist and grind out a below average session. It’s always a sign of fatigue if I fail to burn 400+ calories or row less than 6 kilometres in half an hour.

Before I get out of my kit, I return the garden camera to its station giving it a baseball cap cover to keep the rain off the lens. I change and prepare tomato soup for lunch and settle into watching the afternoon world cup football match. While doing so I do some life admin, arranging a meal table and reorganising a parcel delivery. Some more Christmas deliveries arrive along with the latest letter from my oncologist to my GP. I still cannot get used to reading the phrase, “DIAGNOSIS: Metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer”. It’s not exactly poetic nor comforting. In fact, it’s just a rugged reminder of the shit I am in. However, I am also bought a lottery ticket by my partner so I expect by Monday I shall be ironically filthy rich. At the end of the football match, I go for my promised soak in a bath bomb bath.

It turns out that the expectation of a delicious warm bath was better than the actual experience. I had planned a long soak and a read, but the water was not that warm even if it is bath bomb aromatic and sparkling. So, I cut short my ablutions and return to the sofa and an evening that will include the chicken crockpot meal and the last of the group stage world cup football matches. My weekend to do list is growing as I prepare for my partners birthday on Monday and that the household has a supply of vegetables and other necessary goodies. Of course, there will be tension as the BBC has moved Strictly to Friday night to clash with the football on the other channel. Negotiations are under way. What lays ahead is a weekend of Christmas wrapping, review and reorientation where necessary, and of course birthday preparation for my partner’s birthday on Monday.

Thursday and I wake up feeling a little more chipper than yesterday. I have breakfast and morning meds and check my bank accounts. All the usual out goings and in comings are in place so I can plan the run in to the new year and Christmas. So here we go into the hurly burly of Christmas admin mixed in with the run up to my face-to-face oncology review in January. I must get my cancer admin right this month as a priority. There is a postal strike again today so I will wait anxiously over the next few days to see whether my sendings arrive and my orders turn up. First job today is booking the Tesco delivery slots for the remainder of the year. I get this done and then do a bit more Christmas shopping on the internet. Finally for the morning I draft my reply to the Elders group thanking them for their message and wishing them luck for the future.

I take a brief break and start to draft the blog. I decide to train before I have any more food today, so I get myself ready. Today its 7 degrees in the garage so I decide to get the thermals out and to go for an hours session. While in my kit I go out to Fort Hog in the garden and refill the food bowl even though I think the likelihood is that next doors cat is eating most of it. I also retrieve garden camera to view later. I then go to the garage and strap myself onto the rower and gently set out. An hour later I am still comfortable and have completed the hour. I have burnt 700+ calories and gone in excess of 11 kilometres.

I record my session and have a mug of soup. I sit and recover for a while until I begin to feel the post chill set in, so I change into my football watching gear and settle down to review the garden camera captures. I find two things of interest, firstly my hedgehog puts in an appearance some nights ago and a fox has put in an appearance. Clearly as winter draws in the animals and birds are coming in from the fields as food becomes scarce.

The camera captures are downloaded, and I transfer some to the blog. This completed as the world cup football starts, Spain (strong favourites) versus Japan and I eat tea enthralled by what looks like an easy match for Spain, until that is Japan score two quick goals. This is how championship football should be. By the end of tonight’s matches both Spain and Japan go through at the expense of Germany after a breath-taking evening of football. At last, the championship comes alive. I finish off the drafting of the blog and prepare for an early night. Night meds, reading and sleep.

Wednesday and I wake up feeling very Shrek donkey, I could do with a hug. I delay getting up until I’ve done my social media and email check.

I get myself up and have my usual muesli breakfast and fresh coffee before clearing the kitchen and trying to get focussed. I get a WhatsApp from an old colleague asking for advice/information, which I reply to and then settle down to check my life and cancer admin. I find an email from my sister and reply to her. In no time at all it is lunchtime, and my partner goes out to visit her mother. I get myself changed into my training gear and head for the garage. As I did not train yesterday having pissed blood post training on Monday, I need to do a reasonable session but a controlled one, so I select a 45-minute session at a lower level. I bulldog clip my earphones to my track suit and set off to the sounds of Radio Ones Chill Anthems (so down with the kids). It is a slow and gentle session but burns 500+ calories over 8+ kilometres.

I get myself out of the garage and change into some sloppy football watching gear. I make myself a fried sandwich and fresh coffee and as I head for the lounge, I bump into my eldest daughter coming in with her academic supervisor. They had arranged to meet in the village pub only to find it is closed this lunchtime, so they hunker down in our dining room to talk things academic. I settle down in the lounge to watch football and to do some more Christmas shopping, before I start to draft the blog for the day. I can feel the weather getting cold and have already put the heating on. It feels like winter is here. My evening is football and a film “The Wonder”, which I recommend. I do my night meds and go to bed looking forward to December and a fresh page on my cash book. Roll on Christmas.

Tuesday and I wake up to the sound of my partner going out to the physio. I get up, do breakfast and just as I am downing my fresh coffee my partner returns. A five-car pileup on the way out of the village has prevented her from getting to the physio. An alternative time has been arranged. I saunter about doing Christmas admin stuff for a while and then go to the Shed to write letters and to further surf the net looking for meaningful presents for people. I have some success. I do manage to write a letter and then find I have only one stamp left. By lunchtime I am hungry and retreat to the house noting on my back to it that a rose bush is flowering. I ask you it’s almost December and yet this plant has lost all sense of propriety and is blatantly going out on a stem.

My partner returns from her lunchtime walk clutching (no pun intended) a dozen eggs. She has discovered that where Tesco (multinational food giant) has failed to provide our local shop and post office has succeeded. We celebrate with soup and a roll before she returns to the office for a team meeting over Teams. I pop over to the post office to send items and buy stamps. Of course, while I am there, I snaffle another dozen eggs, a paper and some non-alcohol beer for tonight’s big match. England play Wales in a must win game at the world cup. My afternoon is listless. I feel cold, its 15 degrees in doors. I put the bins out for tomorrow’s collection and move the cars onto the drive in the right order to facilitate my partners travel needs tomorrow. I retrieve a touch activate bedside lamp from the garage and spruce it up so my partners mother can try it out tomorrow to see if it meets her needs. Then I try to contact my sister, but she does not answer the phone, I assume she is busy and leave her a message on her mobile and then send her an email. My afternoon drifts and I feel as if I have a cold coming, I am half waiting for a mystery DHL delivery which I am assured by the tracker is out for delivery and will be with me soon. I am intrigued as I’ve no idea what it can be. By half four I notice that it is dark and after checking the updated energy bill for the month, I put the gas fire on for a while to thaw out and start to draft the blog.

The evening will be football and if I am lucky the penultimate episode of Wednesday while sipping a chilled non-alcohol beer. I had a strange craving for a medicinal brandy the other day. I am sure its related to Christmas coming and the old memories of my nondrinking mother who dead on 10 o’clock on Christmas morning would propose a sherry for everyone. It seems strange not to have a little something at Christmas, yet I’ve managed it for the last three years and prior to that I had periods in my life when I did not drink for years at a time, so I suspect the urge is something more than just a Christmas thing. I have friends who clearly enjoy the festive booze and I suspect I am jealous of their freedom to be able to indulge. I am conscious that I am having a set of bloods done and the results through in Christmas week, so I will be getting an up-to-date indication of how well my kidneys are functioning. As tempting as it is, my strategy is based on sabotaging myself as little as possible as I grapple with my cancer. Large amounts of alcohol are probably not wise no matter what the celebration. I end todays blog with the news that England won and play Senegal on Sunday in the knockout stage. I finish the Wednesday series and thoroughly enjoyed it. Night meds and bed.