Wednesday and I wake up feeling a little less snotty and have hopes for the day. I breakfast in my Gandolf blanket and watch the latest machinations of the Tory party conference. A coffee and a fried egg sandwich did nothing to make anything I saw and heard palatable. At times like the this the only place to be is in the Shed so I load up my office backpack and go to the Shed. There I stay all morning writing letters and reflecting on my current lack of inspiration. I stop for coffee and biscuits but still I lack verve and vision. Lunch is a dish of soup and the unexpected pleasure of post, which included a real letter. I retreat again to the Shed and read my letter at my leisure. It’s a good letter and I am moved to write a reply straight away. I beaver away until my pen and ink have nothing else to add. The rain lashes down and at one point I think I detect a leak in the roof of the Shed. It might be real or a result of the force of the rain. Whatever it is it will have to wait for dryer weather.

I gird up my loins and prepare to go to the post office to get stamps and realise that I promised to cook tonight’s meal. On looking in the fridge I found the options to be mince and fish cakes, neither of which I fancied. As life is too short I did a quick consultation of the household and agreed pizzas as an option. With the food politics done I go out to the post office to get stamps, vastly overpriced, and then walk to our local co-op for the pizzas. All goes to plan and I am back home to start the drafting of the blog and to receive the delivery of the parts I need t repair our water terrace. The top two sections have been cracked by dumb arse window cleaners using it to climb on the back roof to clean the windows. So I shall make the water terrace good and arm it with deterrents. First is the daily check on Fort Hog to see if the food is gone and to replenish if necessary. Providing this all goes well I’m in for an evening of European football and Dr Martin. I am acutely aware that I am edging towards another injection Monday and given the experience of the last one I am somewhat anxious about it. I realise that being anxious about it will not help but it is what it is.

Tuesday and I wake up with a snotty nose and itchy eyes. Is it a cold, rhinitis or an allergy? Is it my long hair, who knows. I get up and have breakfast to bring me round. Today I am meeting a friend for coffee so I am getting my arse in gear to shower, get cash and then drive to the nominated cafe.

Everything goes to plan and I find myself sitting in Flitkins in Shepshed by 10:40am nestling a warm cup of hot chocolate in my hands. I sip it appreciatively and scribble a to do list in the pad I’ve brought in my backpack. Always now I take my mobile office with me, although on this occasion I have left the laptop behind. I do not have to wait long before my friend arrives and we settle down to chat. It is really good to see him and hear how he has come to be in his current position. As ever when companies merge, and new investment is made people go as the new structures emerge and savings are made. It has always been like this and unfortunately my friend was in the wrong place at the wrong time and appears to have fallen foul of the old process of “last one in is first one out”. Fortunately he has valuable skills and is already talking to people about new work. In fact he has a call at 1pm today to talk to someone about a possible post. We indulge in another drink and something to eat before he goes off to take his call and I return to my car to journey home. It has been a real pleasure to see him again and I look forward to later in the month when a group, including my friend are meeting up for a Saturday lunch.

Back home I rest for a bit and then go to see if the hedgehog has eaten its food. It has and because I have reset the garden camera, I have videos of the hog roaming my garden. I was going to include a couple here just for the pleasure of seeing my hog alive and well, but my web page is telling me it can’t handle the type of video file I am using. I spend time trying to resolve the blog problem but, in the end, give in and go and buy chocolate. There is a tricky clash on TV tonight, Rangers v Liverpool cuts across The Man Inside, although I have to say I’ve lost some interest in the Man Inside, the scenario started out with a semblance of possibility but has just over stretched itself. Based on the assumption that anyone could become a murder because people happen to people is just bollocks. It’s a fanciful theory pedalled frequently but the reality just is not that simple, I know, I am after all a legitimate expert in the field. The character on death row who is a professor of criminology is also supposedly able to divine the solution to murders by observation coupled with statistics. Again this is limited in the real world and much of this stuff is hindsight, although “profilers” would say not. The reality is that a good detective is just as good as the “profilers”, after all statistics are statistics. So, I am afraid my interest has waned. My family think I am no fun because they think I know “who did it” before the end of whatever film, series or drama we are watching. The reality is that it’s all fictional stuff and as such is predictable because people have to make it up within a context of entertainment, and in that format there are limited options. Any way I shall see it through but no longer care about any of the characters.

The upshot of today is that I have an updated to do list and some days to complete it. So that is my intention even though I know that the likelihood is that my poetry efforts will only add to my experience of failure and rejection, but that’s art for you. However, you can rely on chocolate.

Monday and I wake up feeling crap, a vague light headedness. So I get up for coffee and toast followed by more coffee. My intention was to start to train first thing but feel so shit I am going to concentrate on just getting myself functional. So, I order my drugs, clear the kitchen and start to draft the blog. This is not an auspicious start to my week. I retreat to the Shed and before I settle down I check Fort Hog to see if the food has gone. It has, so I check the camera. There are pictures of the hog but also pictures of the pesky cat. The cat had managed to perch on the narrow strip of now spiky roof of Fort Hog. The greedy little monster is at least persistent. As I have no more spike mats I apply my creativity and adaptability to the problem. My stroke of genius is “holly”. Natures natural spikes come to my rescue and I just happen to have a source of it. I set about shoring up the Fort Hog defences. I am hoping my inspiration works out, tomorrow’s camera shots will show me.

I return to the Shed and spend time staring into space and then write a couple of poems. They are not good but are reflective of where I am with writing poetry. They were spurred by my recent contemplating trying to submit more of my poems to magazines for publication and entering them into competitions. Only yesterday I got another “piss off” email, so I was in the mood to put pen to paper.

I am one of life’s accompanists,
a pianist to a singer,
a backing vocalist to another.
All my life I’ve echoed,
I’ve reflected the art around me,
embellished, encouraged and applauded.
All that is my own is sunk,
mired in a talentless shell
that cannot be broken through. 
It is a tragedy to know this 
And yet persevere.
Grasping at thin air 
the hope is to catch that moment
that others feel, recognise
yet could not find the words for.
To communicate before knowing
what meaning it might contain.
Finding the moment in this
 second hand world that lives
for that one sparkling
coming into the light.

I pack up the Shed and go back indoors to have a soup lunch and to spend time looking at which poetry publishers I am going to send stuff to. The various publisher all have different submission requirements and deadlines. I draw up a list of possible magazines and list the main requirements. I’ve sat around too long a get a sneezing fit, so I rouse myself and set about hoovering the remainder of the house and getting the washing in. Whilst doing so I miss a call from a friend, which is always a disappointment. I finally get to sit and to draft more of the blog against the background of economic U turns. At any moment I expect Tesco to deliver and curb my irritation at next door having an Asda delivery and blocking my drive. The perils of first world living right there. As is so predictable the Tesco van pulls up just as I sit down to eat my tea. There is a flurry of activity and then the pleasure of food follows. This evening will be slow and preparing to meet an old colleague and friend for coffee tomorrow morning. All my messages today are about how people are struggling at the moment either with illness or with juggling the Real World, or both. It seems that there is a general craving for relief from it all at the moment.

Sunday, a long lay in, coffee and conversation to catch up where my partner are. After a long chat we get up for a cook breakfast. Before I get to tuck into my breakfast, I weigh myself with a great deal of trepidation as I expect to top 100 kilos. To my surprise I weigh in at 98.1 kilos, a loss of 1.2 kilos. We decide to go for a walk in a nearby park. We drive to the park and walk around the woods and the pond. Sitting by the pond we watch the fish rise and the geese glide around. The Capaccino and the hot chocolate from the mobile coffee trailer tastes good as we sit at a picnic bench and just look at the greenery around us.

Back home I watch rugby before checking Fort Hog and the garden camera It seems the hog has found the food, although not confirmed on camera, but there was no sign of the cat that has been stealing the food. There were pictures of the hedgehog in and around the canteen, so it’s good news, I think. I get my washing away and get ready for the evening, which will be dominated by Strictly, The Inside Man and football. Of course, there is Tesco to organise and other odds and ends. This is the last week of my cycle so tomorrow I will be ordering my drugs and getting myself ready for the run in to my injection Monday.

Saturday, and I am up relatively early to make drinks and rouse my partner as she is going to have her hair done this morning at the salon attached to the gym. We silently drink coffee before having breakfast and driving to the gym. I decide to spend a couple of hours in the club lounge reading and drafting the first stages of today’s blog. I guess amongst my friends there are those saying “why am I not training?” The truth is I still feel shit and full of cold, although thankfully my nose has stopped running. Not a pretty picture but it is as it is. It’s been too long since I have been able to train in the way I would want to, and I fall into the trap of eating sweet things to comfort myself all the while worrying that I am putting on weight. It’s an old pattern and a common one, but although I know it, dredging up that initial act of will to make myself start the long haul back feels daunting. It also feels a little scary as I fear over doing it or how my body will react to the effort. I think what I am saying is that I feel vulnerable at the moment. I wrote to a friend recently about how I caught myself letting, or rather hoping the TV would comfort me. There I was sitting there in the morning watching TV and suddenly realised I was just watching it for comfort. The moment I realised I switched it off and went and wrote a letter as a way of trying to understand it. I sometimes feel awkward and guilty about what I ask some of my correspondents to put up with in my letters. In a Real World full of all the threats and perturbations to us all it does not seem fair to load others with my particular package of woes and anxieties. This is especially true of those friends who are themselves battling with their own life packages which in many cases far outweigh mine.

So, I drink a large black americano and contemplate how I am going to get started again. There are a few options, but I know that I favour getting back onto the rower and building up slowly again. Realistically I must set goals to achieve but they need to be in a sensible time frame. Anything I start now must be geared towards Christmas time. Ideally, I need a bit of weight to spare to cope with the Christmas indulgence. I am encouraged as I sit here in the gym lounge and look around at those who are far more corpulent than I and by their obvious efforts to stay fit and to exercise. For me it is more than weight loss, exercise represents my only way to fight my cancer. Everyday I do not make the effort cancer wins. It nibbles a bit more of me away and debilitates me by another iota. This is what scares me more than anything else, the fact that I might give up on myself. It’s tricky, because friends and family are supportive and encourage me to rest, to be careful, to be kind to myself and not to do myself damage, however I must take the risk. It is tempting to go along with this intended kindness but in my heart, I know I must push and push persistently. My next oncology appointment is on 1st November, so I have a month to make a dent in my complacency and my weight. Then it will be Christmas. I think the answer is to simplify and to routinise my life more constructively. A friend made a good point the other day when they said to me that I should consider training early in the day rather than waiting to later when I sometimes have run out of energy. It is a good point. Perhaps if I exercise before breakfast, it will significantly change the rest of my day’s activities. It’s worth a try. I know this may not be interesting but at least if I say it publicly, I might actually do it, a sort of commitment. All of this is a part of my process, of how I have to find ways to externalise what I am pushing around in my head. I know that if I do not do this, I will continue to push the stuff around and around in my head and I know that my head is very good at fooling itself, it will delude me, mislead me and try to comfort me with cognitive dissonance. Although I trust my brain not to hurt me it has some funny ways of doing so at times. At least being a psychologist and therapist taught me to take time out and to talk to my frontal lobes on occasions just to check out what is going on. It also taught me to check out with others whether it makes sense or whether I am just falling into old patterns or just talking bollocks. It would appear that this blog is one of the ways I try to disentangle my ongoing internal dialogue and how I interact with the Real World of material survival. It goes back to one of my basic beliefs, a lynch pin of my personal universe and that is “a central purpose of our lives is to make meaning and to build a personal universe to explain our existence and to make living possible “. I clearly carry the influence that Irvin Yalom had on my practice and thinking. In my personal universe I have cancer pushing me for answers and understanding. That brings me full circle to the need to live as long as possible in order to make as much meaning as possible and to live as well as possible. Time for another coffee and to read before moving on with my day. Actually, during this typing my nose goes into overdrive, I sneeze like a machine gun and my eyes water profusely, it’s almost like I am having an allergy attack, except I do not have allergies. I take an Actifed and fairly soon I feel the slightly light head effect of the pseudo ephedrine, but crucially my nose stops running, and I am able to function.

My day moved on. My partner emerged with a fresh hair style and we drive home to get shopping bags before moving on to the garden centre. There we bought fresh veg and salad and returned home. I’m feeling tired and descend in to watching half a football match and then follow it up with a rugby match. My local team the Tigers are playing Saracens, and they get thrashed by almost 50 points. It’s a disappointing afternoon. I rouse myself to open my Amazon parcel and find my cat deterrent panels have arrived. So with a supreme effort I set about making the hedgehog canteen into a a fortress. I name it Fort Hog.

I have replaced the garden camera and replenished the hedgehog food in Fort Hog. Now all I have to do is wait and see what happens. Pictures to follow. I notice that the garden is still trying it best at this late time to produce flowers and to thrive. The flowers in the front garden are providing late pollen for the bees.

In a fit of optimism, I have added a planner to the wall of my Shed. It was kicking around spare so I decided to use it. The dry marker does not work it’s been laying around for so long. There it is in all its virgin glory waiting for me to plan and also to find some new dry wipe pens. At the moment I quite like its blankness.

After all this unexpected activity I am done. I’ve no energy left apart from enough to semi complete the blog draft. I am about to watch Strictly, eat tea and then give myself up to whatever my family want to view. I shall no doubt nibble along the way, sip some sort of drink and finally take my night meds and go to bed. The poetry, the war in Ukraine, energy prices and the next chapter in the Blunder Truss saga is just going to have to wait. I’ve got a busy October so I need to get on form, sleep first.

Friday, and I wake to the sound of my daughter heading off to work and get up to find my partner getting ready to visit her mother with her brother. This means that once I have downed my breakfast, coffee and meds I have the house to myself. There are chores to do before I can indulge. Today is “read your meters” day and get the readings to the energy supplier to ensure you do not get stiffed on the new prices as from tomorrow. I read our meters and note them down before logging onto my suppliers app. While I am inputting my data I notice that the amount of credit we have suddenly drops. When I check and do the maths it turns out that my supplier has just taken the remaining period of the old price (pre-Putin) in readiness to charge me the new Putin rates as from tomorrow. In doing so a communist tyrant will enable my energy supplier to make obscene excess profits, which this pox ridden government is going to let them keep, whilst the energy executives piss themselves with joy at the tax cut the same pox ridden government has just given them. Cannot help wondering what Truss’s head would look like on a spike.

I move on to the next item on my to do list, which is to clear the kitchen followed by sticking a load of washing in the machine. This done I can indulge in an extravagant bath. There is nothing like the opulence of a good bath. I imagine such luxury will become rarer in the Putin polluted future. Whilst in the bath I continue to read A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. It is a remarkable book and in many ways before its time. It captures the working classes (or in Americas case, the poor) aspirations and the recognition that education is the pathway to them. There was a section where the main character starts their first job. A mindless manual job of winding paper onto wire to form a stem for someone else to attach petals to. At this point she has the following realisation:

“”This could be a whole life,” she thought. “You work eight hours a day covering wires to earn money to buy food and to pay for a place to sleep so that you can keep living to come back to cover more wires. Some people are born and kept living just to come to this. Of course, some of these girls will marry, marry men who have the same kind of life. What will they gain? They’ll gain someone to hold conversations within the few hours at night between work and sleep.” But she knew the gain wouldn’t last. She had seen too many young working couples who, after the children came and the bills piled up, rarely communicated with each other except in bitter snarls. “These people are caught” she thought. “And why? Because (remembering her grandmother’s repeated conviction), they haven’t got enough education,” Fright grew in Francie. Maybe it would be so that she’d never get to high school; maybe she’d never have more education than she had at that moment. Maybe all her life she’d have to cover wires…cover wires…”

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. Betty Smith pp358.

I remember having this exact experience in my late teens as I stood behind a Post Office counter amid my fellow counter clerks of many years and heading for retirement. In my case I had 1 O level and was desperate to go to university because I knew that it was my way out of “covering wires”. Like Francie I had parents that had educational aspirations. In Francie’s case her family had read a page of the bible and a page of Shakespeare every day and she had learned to love reading. My parents took us to concerts and art galleries, which was lucky as I am dyslexic (I was the one at the back doing raffia work while others learnt things) but I got the message that there was a world of culture and learning that could lift me out of where I was. I thought if I had a degree, I had a meal ticket for life. As it turned out I needed two. The fact that this was all seen and written about in 1944, four years before I was born, I find incredible. The fact that somehow in every generation there are those of us lucky enough to realise what our way out is and to be able to achieve it, while others either never have the realisation or for whatever reason are unable to take that path, is what inspires some of us to fight.

That was a lot to appreciate in one bath time. I got out of cold water slightly wrinkly and got on with stuff. I hang my washing up, checked the hedgehog food and the garden camera. The scrofulous black and white cat from next door continues to plunder the hedgehog food. I have ordered cat “prickles” and hope to construct a workable deterrent to the cat. I eat lunch and settle down to some domestic comfort as the rain lashes down outside. The garden camera can go out tomorrow. My partner returns from seeing her mother and we sort out her mother’s meter readings and look at her energy usage. There is something awry and we start the process of communicating with a chat bot. So the early evening heaves into view and I start to draft the blog, while my eldest daughter makes her way home in the rain and my partner contemplates making tea. In an act of pre-Putin gas prices, we put the heating on, we’ll show the bastard we can’t be bullied, this is another cold war he will lose.

Thursday, and I wake to a partner looking for her work security pass as she is going into work. The pass is found and she goes to work. I get up and have coffee and breakfast with my morning meds. I potter about for a bit and then retreat to the Shed to write a letter and sort through my correspondence. My daughter goes to the doctor with a sore throat and returns having been told there were not enough doctors to see her and to return later in the day.

I make myself lunch and put the evening meal in the crockpot before returning to the Shed. I am preparing a list of contacts to go alongside my Will and other papers. I continue to tidy up my correspondence and then I walk over to the post office to post my letter. It’s time to check the hedgehog feeding station. It appears the food has gone so I refill the food bowls and put fresh water out for the hog. I rejig the anti-cat defences but do not have time to check the garden camera. An old colleague calls me, and I get to speak to old colleagues on speaker phone. It was a nice surprise and good to her them again. My daughter returns from the doctors with a diagnosis of laryngitis. The garden guy arrives so I make him coffee and talk about work. As I finish the chat my partner returns home.

The evening begins and straight after our meal my partner goes for her singing lesson. I watch a rugby match on TV. The rest of the evening is taken by TV before I take my night meds and go to bed, still hoping that my cold symptoms will abate enough for me to train soon.

Wednesday, bin day and the day I wake up still with a cold. I make coffee and watch the morning news. The bank of England is buying government debt as government bonds plunge. This means of course that pension funds and other stuff are watching the value of their balance sheets vanishing before their eyes. Mortgages are also going up, so the Tory government has started with a real bang. The morning is a patchwork of odds and ends. Some poetry stuff, some domestic chores, replenishing the hedgehog feed and reviewing the garden camera.

It gets to lunchtime and everyone in the house are cold. I decide to test the central heating. I know it’s a radical move, but I figure the system needs a run and be warmed through just to check the system is fully functional. While I wait for the system to warm up I do a bit more research on poetry publishers. During this I am engaged with WhatsApp arranging to meet a friend for coffee next week. He has suffered a cruel and fierce redundancy decision in less than a month after taking up a new post and moving to the area to do so. It is an increasingly harsh Real World out there. My partner gets a call from the GP who decides it’s okay to tell her over the phone that her recent x-ray is suggesting she has arthritis in her forearms. All the GP can offer is pain killers and a thought that there might be a bit of carpal tunnel syndrome. She offers to refer to a specialist but warns that it will take a long time to be seen. I ring our local Spire hospital and within minutes they reply to my enquiry and in the call, we arrange an appointment for a few days’ time, fix the initial fee and provide them with all the information they need to access the x-rays already done. All we can do now is attend the appointment and undertake the most thorough assessment possible and then see what options become available.

The rest of my afternoon is spent trying to sort out when I can go to York to see my mentor again. It feels the right time to do this talking. I also spend some time catching up with some life admin. By the time the working day comes to an end everyone in the house is feeling drained and without energy. It becomes a fish and chip night and my partner, and I go over to our village chippy to collect the goodies.

Back home its fish and chips and then we settle down for a quiet evening watching TV and hunkering down. I watch the news with a kind of morbid fascination as the financial situation unravels. I draft the blog and contemplate what I am going to do tomorrow. As always, I take my night meds and hope for significant sleep tonight.

Tuesday and I am awakened y the doorbell at 7:30. I get dressed quickly adn find my partner has taken delivery of a large cardboard container. I set about the package, and it reveals a hamper. Itis a present from my sister. I excitedly open up the hamper and unwrap the numerous inner parcels. It is a treasure trove of culinary delights. The family are going to dine richly over the coming days. A super start to the day, which I follow up with coffee and a dish of muesli. I start to draft the blog and then move on into the day.

After the excitement of the hamper, I go to the Shed and tinker with my laptop camera. I try out some of the applications and end up making a video file. Its lunchtime before finish recording and I am getting peckish. I am tempted to raid the hamper, but I resist and go for my favourite bacon and lentil soup. I spend some time trying to get my EE phone app working and eventually have to reinstall it but eventually I get there. The window cleaner comes and goes. Not impressed with the quality-of-service and will have a think about alternatives. A friend messages me to tell me she has been successful in an online auction and with appropriate pride tells me how she succeeded by going the extra two pence in the dyeing seconds of the auction. She clearly is a formidable bidder. It’s a while since I ventured onto ebay, but I do recall the pleasure of what felt like a victory when winning a pair of Chinese archer’s thumb rings. I pop across to the post office to send my most recent letters and return home. The TV is on and I get engrossed in the Labour Party Conference. Keir Starmer is delivering his keynote speech and I have to say he does it well. He has some good ideas, all he has to do now is win an election.

I get off the sofa and go into the garden to fill the bird feeders, fill the squirrel feeder and replenish the hedgehog’s dish. In a burst of unexpected energy I get all the garden furniture covers out and, in the drizzle, put the garden furniture to bed for the winter. I can’t see me sitting around in the garden in the coming weeks as the temperature is dropping. So my garden is now in winter mode, perhaps a tad early but it feels right for this year. Perersly as I sit and update the draft of the blog the sun comes out.

As it is Tuesday, I put the recycling bins out and then retreat to the sofa and check my social media. I get a message from a friend that is disturbing, and I do not get messages from others, that is also disturbing but I dare say all will become clear in due course. I continue to draft the blog as the evening beckons. For me tonight is one for a relaxing bath and a bit of a read. I think my cold is just beginning to lift, apart from the odd sneezing fit so I am hoping for a good night’s sleep. Meds and bed.

Monday and I wake up with my cold still in place. So I get up wrap up warm and have coffee and breakfast. I go to take my morning meds and find my drugs wallet empty. I also find my spare wallet empty as well and I realise that it’s time to do my fortnightly refill. I grab my drugs supply and fill my wallets; mentally noting where I am in my injection cycle and drug reordering phase. I take my meds and then head for the Shed.

For the first time this year I feel the chill of autumn. I know I have a cold but the ambient temperature has dropped, I am sure of it. I check the re-sighted hedgehog canteen and find the food has gone. Either the hog has eaten it or the cat that visits has. I have hung lemon slices around the canteen as cats do not like citrus scents but I have no evidence on the garden camera as to whether it is working or not. I settle in the Shed and have five-minute blast of the heater and then start to write letters. This is me until gone midday when I pack up my office backpack and return to the house for lunch. I make a favourite, fried egg sandwich and check my emails. There is a message with a spread sheet attached of a great number of poetry magazines and online forums, which is a god send for me as it gives me a starting point to put some things out there. I’ve not given up on my poetry coyote YouTube channel idea, but it is taking me longer to get together than I anticipated. I go through the spreadsheet and mark off the ones that are a possibility for me. Amazon delivers. It is my wearable sofa blanket, which I of course try on. Once on I could not resist playing the warlock much to the amusement of my partner. Thankfully I have no plans to wear it outside the house.

As a friend noted the pattern matching of the giant pocket on the front is appalling, which I have to agree it is but slobbing on my sofa I guess I am not going to be too worried about it. I go and put food in the hedgehog canteen and then settle down to start to draft the blog and prepare for the evening. There is an international football match on, England v Germany. It will pass some time and will be the trial run for the sofa blanket. It is cold, I am old and I might just see if the gas fire in the lounge is working for a little while. It’s the time of year to test it. My sister calls and tells me to expect a package tomorrow and in passing tells me that she is having trouble logging into this web site via google. Is anyone else having an issue. The message from google is that the site is not secure, however the site does have an SSI certificate in place so there should be no problem.