Friday, a missing day, the only thing that happened was my autumn COVID booster jab done at a local Boots. No fuss, straight in, a few questions and then a rapid jab. I was sent off into the distance with a warning not to drive for 15 minutes. I ignored that and drove home with my supplies to cook our quests meal tomorrow. England lose 1-o to Italy in the evening.

Saturday and a busy day ahead so I am up early for coffee and meds. I then spend my morning beavering away in the kitchen. There is a beef Bourguignon to get into the crockpot for the next nine hours and the ingredients of couscous stuffed beef tomatoes to get ready. By lunch time the Bourguignon is slowly cooking and the stuffed tomatoes ready to pop into the oven. I add a Quinnel of Greek yoghurt and decorative strawberry to the strawberry prosecco jellies that I made the night before and return them to them to the fridge.

I have a little time to prepare for my initial meeting of the Leicestershire poetry Stanza. I print off the remaining poems and arrange them in the presentation order that has come through by email from the convenor. I settle down to read the through one last time. I definitely have favourites. Two o’clock arrives and I log in on zoom. I find myself with a screen full of unknown new people. No says hello or introduces themselves and no one asks me anything about me. So this is how adults in the real world conduct themselves, interesting. The Stanza starts. Someone reads a poem, not the author, and then everyone makes comments about it. Its cear there are the emotional responders and then there are the “academic” ones. I learn very quickly that there is a poetry vocabulary which is indicative of ones knowledge. A sort of “in speak” of nods and winks to a “higher” understanding of the art of poetry. I’m tempted to leave but decide I am going to stickit out. I am third poem in. Someone reads my poem adn i have to sit silently while the others talk about it. In general, they are kind and make useful comments and pose one or two interesting questions. Why do I start every line with a capital? Good question, I think its habit. Once they have finished, I thank them for their feedback and fill in some of the gaps as way of explaining the root of the poem. I thank them for being kind on my first time of receiving such criticism live for the first time. We move on and I feel emboldened enough to make a comment about someone else’s poem. I’m on a roll and opt to read a poem. It’s the one that gave me the greatest buzz when I first read it. It struck me as a performance piece, and I thought I could do it justice. It was written by the guy who made it clear at the start that he did not want to read his own as he is dyslexic, so I figured a bit of dyslexia comradery was in order. I enjoyed reading the poem and joined in the debate. The poet seemed to be happy with my reading of his poem. We break for a coffee and then we are back in rhythm reading, commenting and moving on. The end arrives and it’s a quick goodbye, see you next time and the host ended the session. I survived and I am left with all sorts of impressions of the participants. I notice I am the only one that used a “wallpaper” on the zoom feed. The majority of them were clearly siting in lounges or offices with the walls full of books. Interestingly the obvious exception was my fellow dyslexic who just happened to be the only black guy in the group. Perhaps next time I might take a bit more of a risk with what I give them to consider.

Once free of the Stanza I am quickly back into cook mode. I prepare the table and retrieve my prepared dishes. Our guest’s message to say they are slightly delayed, so I retime my cooking schedule and then I wait for them to arrive. They arrive in due course, and we sit and nibble and drink until the first course is ready. We begin the meal and conversation starts in earnest. We eat our way through starter, main, sweet, cheese and biscuits followed by coffee with mints and chocolates. We talk and exchange experiences till almost midnight, the time has flown and it’s been a real pleasure to have spent time so convivially. We wave our guests off into the night and then my partner and I load the dishwasher and sleepily go to bed. I forget to take my meds.

Sunday. I wake up feeling quite good, no bad gut and feeling quite emotionally plump, I must leave out the night meds more often. I make clear away the last of the previous night’s debris and make drinks for myself and partner before returning to bed. We check out how we are after last night and then get up to have breakfast before face timing our youngest daughter. I check the hedgehog canteen adn find the food has gone. Cat or Hedgehog? I refill the food dish and then check the garden camera. There are pictures of the hog but there is no clear evidence of who is eating the food. My partner goes to the gym and then I settle down to catch up drafting the blog before indulging in a televised rugby match. It’s a good match and is worth the time. I do a bit of tidying and do a couple of crosswords before settling into my evening of food (re remains of yesterday’s evening meal) and then I will settle down to a quiet evening of TV catch up and reading.

Thursday and I wake up with a streaming nose. A cold surely not. So I am up early downing a coffee and looking for my Actifed. I do toast and more coffee to wash down the morning meds. I check my messages and emails and find that members of the poetry Stanza are sending poems for Saturdays meeting. I start downloading them and later in the morning I print them and spend time reading them. There is some really good stuff and some stuff that does not touch me. Bound to be the case I guess. My own submission is one of my Herod’s Children, the failed Ducks at Swinfen poem. It’s a poem I feel safe to share. I will be interested to hear what people think of it. The format allows for each poem to be discussed by the group with the one rule that the poet responsible cannot join in, at least not till the group is done with it.

I spend part of the morning deciding on the food for our guests on Saturday. Because I am at the Stanza in the afternoon, I have chosen things that I can prepare beforehand. As autumn draws on I’ve gone for plain but hearty food with a touch of lightness as a sweet. I shall be starting with couscous stuffed beef tomatoes, followed by beef Bourguignon. The finishing dish is strawberry prosecco jelly with a touch of Greek yogurt and a smidgen of honey. Cheese board to follow, with coffee and mints. I hope that my planning means that I can time my Stanza and the meal in harmony.

A friend rings me on her way to the golf course and we have time to chat about the letter she sent me. She is in the process of moving house so there is much to do and to consider while dealing with the slowness of the process. She arrives at her golf club and we cease our conversation. Another friend sends me a link to the explanation of the energy cap arrangements, so I finally grasp what the caping system actually does. I still need the winter energy strategy and that means next month I shall treat myself to one of those blankets with arms and a hood. I have found one that is covered in leopard’s heads. So come October I shall be pursuing my dream blanket.

The postman arrives and to my great satisfaction my new seal ring has arrived. I am like a child with a new toy and open it immediately. It is bright and shiny and I cannot wait to get it onto my finger. Yes of course there are pictures:

It is strange how much I am relieved to have my seal ring on my finger again. It is as if I have regained part of myself. My partner goes to see her mother and I go to the Shed where I have a letter to send. I use my seal ring for the first time and then I hot foot it over to the post office to send my letter on its way. While visiting the Shed I check the hedgehog canteen but none of the food has gone, so the hedgehog I photographed a couple of days ago appears to have been passing through. By the time the garden guy turns up my partner arrives back from her visit, so I set the gardener the chore of mowing the lawns as I was aware that it was forecast rain over the next couple of days and we would be running out of opportunities to get the last mow of the season done. As it turns out I was right, the mowing got done just as a shower arrived. My next task is to put the covers over the garden furniture. I do not think we are in for an Indian autumn, and I do not see me sitting outside much from now on.

My partner makes the evening meal while I write my shopping list for Saturday’s meal. We eat and then she goes off to the office for her online singing lesson and I begin the drafting of the blog. My evening will drift a bit as I blog, read, catch up on some TV before getting myself to bed. I have a COVID booster jab booked for tomorrow, so I am hoping that I wake up without the excesses of a cold.

Wednesday and I leap out of bed at 7 o’clock as my feet look forward to the chiropodist. It’s a real treat and worth the early rise, shower and leisurely breakfast. I drive to the chiropodist who is always chatty and down to earth. A good warm foot soak in a magic brew and then the pampering starts. I am scraped, sanded, clipped and filed before being disinfected and oiled. Itis a glorious way to spend half an half hour.

I drive home via the petrol station and fill my partners car. I get back and retrieve the now empty trash bin and make a pot of herbal tea. Then I am off to the Shed to be creative. I am practicing my Chinese characters. Today I have focused on Yugen, which signifies a profound awareness of the universe that triggers feelings too deep and mysterious for words.

It is a difficult symbol to get right, and I spend a long time practicing it. My intention is to put it on a small artists board. Before I can undertake the task I get a phone call from a friend and we spend a long time chatting and catching up. Lots of family stuff and also I had revealed to me how I can get the most out of my Tesco points. Apparently, it is possible to upgrade their value for other things other than food. I shall explore this. After a long and enjoyable chat I have lunch. The ring people call me and tell me my new ring is ready and if I am in tomorrow, they will send it. I am very happy to be in tomorrow to get my new ring and the news puts me in a good mood .

Back in the Shed I work on my symbol and at last commit it to the board using ink and brush. I am not happy with it. I instantly do not like my effort. I paint over it with ink and decide to draw the symbol in chalk and then fix it. I have to wait for the inked board to dry so I write a letter while I wait for this to happen. I post the letter picking up envelopes and fruit pastilles on the way and return home to the Shed. I take my dried board and chalk the Yugen characters on to it. It works and I spray it with fixative. Time to return to the house but not before checking the hedgehog food I put out. It is still there, so my hedgehog has not found the new sight yet.

Back at my laptop I check my emails and find the link to the Poetry Society Stana meeting has been sent to me. There is the invitation and with it the further invitation to submit a poem for the group to criticise and give feedback on. I spend time deciding if I should or not but, in the end, send them my Swinfen Duckling poem, one of my Herod’s Children (competition failures).

Ducklings at Swinfen
In the midst of wire, ducklings
Following their mother
Across a pond of tarmac.
Hunched ducks dotted around,
Not paddling, not swimming, sitting.
No water to be seen, just black stuff
Rimmed by trodden green.
Dependant, hurrying bundles staying close,
Amongst the lost boys,
And their guards.
This all taken as a matter of fact,
To me a wonder.
In all the places to find
New life in such array.
This was the last place,
That scuttling, piping, urgency of survival
And dependency.
Yet mother chooses prison
To bring her children 
To safety and to life.
Astounding, but ignored.
That’s prison for you.

I will be interested to see what they say. I’ve seen some poems from other members. Not my cup of tea so far but they maybe as reticent as me about making public their trickier works. I did consider sending my poem that starts “What a cunt Fern Cotton is” but thought this might be a bit reckless in the circumstances. That’s the sort of poem I will save for a live performance. The evening creeps up on me and I am suddenly feeling tired and headachy. Paracetamol and a quiet evening are what lays before me, perhaps a hint of football and a drama but I shall be in bed early tonight. I am excited by the prospect of feeling that I have retrieved that part of me the seal ring represents. Tomorrow will be a good day.

Tuesday and I am writing this at the end of a day when I have run out of energy. I have cleaned the house, emptied bins, cleared the kitchen, discovered the hedgehog is still alive, cooked the evening meal and attended a meeting on Zoom. I’ve calculated energy costs, and now I am beyond saying anything cogent about the experience. I had intended to train but ran out of spoons. Tomorrow, I go to the chiropodist early and then the day is mine to use. It seems time is slipping by and I am not paying enough attention to that.

Monday, royal funereal day, and I finally wake up at about 10 o’clock and find my way to coffee and toast. I settle down in front of the TV and get mesmerised by the sound of the pageant in front of me. That consistent hypnotic beat that pervaded everything was an interesting element. I became interested in the chequered floors of the various venues and wondered about the relevance of the black adn white chequer design that was in them all. Of course I google it and get an interesting surprise. Apparently, it is hugely symbolic and it became more intriguing when I discovered the centrality of it in the Masonic symbolism.

Always there is something that pops up to surprise me in these situations. The family breaks for lunch and to chat and then we get back to the final burial at Windsor. So that was the day until the evening brings dinner, more Paddington and time to read and reorientate. Tomorrow its back to the real world and an Elders meeting. I also need to train, it’s been too long, and I can wait no longer to feel “right”, now has to be the time to get going again.

Sunday, a slow start, coffee in bed and morning chat. I’m sensing I am not chipper and it turns out I am right. Over a bacon sandwich late breakfast it became apparent that my internal organs were planning and escape via my nostrils. I’m not impressed and neither was my youngest daughter on a face-to-face call. Sniffing is not the most attractive accompaniment to a family call. I ransack the house looking for Actifed. It’s the one thing I have found for me that staves off the symptoms of a cold, crucial it dries my nose. I look in all my places of Actifed storage and find none. The only conclusion is that I have run out of this magic compound. This is a pain in the arse as it means going out to the major shopping complex which has a Boots.

I get my partners car out and drive off to the shopping centre thinking it is only going to take me a few minutes. How wrong can you be. It seems the world has decided that it want to go shopping (obviously the misery of recession hasn’t quite caught hold yet) the traffic was horrendous. Not only was everyone out stocking up before tomorrow’s funereal but the traffic flow system has an exit from the new part of the shopping complex exiting out into the traffic flow that is queuing to get into the complex. Its traffic flow madness, God knows what pimply trainee civic engineer was responsible for this. I get more irritated as my handkerchief gets more and more saturated and my sneezing increases. I finally get into park and cut through Primark (that’s an experience) to get to Boots. A friendly (to start with) chap helps me find the Actifed, however when I try to buy two packets, he refuses to sell me two. I’m an adult for fuck sake but I am clearly not to be trusted not to top myself. A classic case of how the minority screw it for the rest of us. I take my single packet (not a single suicidal thought in my head, more homicidal actually) and return to the car. The drive home went much quicker. Once home I take a tablet of the lethal drug and settle down to watch a rugby match on the TV. Serendipitously Tesco deliver at half time, which means I can get it all squirrelled away before the second half kicks off. The rugby finishes and my nose is now dry but at the expense of a certain cognitive buzz. I settle down to a football match and once again I am interrupted by a deliver. This time it is Amazon with my super glue. I set about mending the broken glass droplet that is part of the dining room light fitment. The operation is successful and a couple of hours later I return it to its hook on the array.

My partner returns from the gym and in due course my eldest daughter returns from the local Bird Garden, where her favourite Cockatoo lives. The evening starts with tea and more pre funereal TV followed by Ridley and me drafting the blog. It will be an early night for me in the spare room. One thing I did do in a moment was to scribble short poem, as follows:

They call my poetry
Boney.
No flesh
No story.
I open my eyes,
There is light
And wonder.
This is 
Enough.

I think it was prompted by the poetry books I bought yesterday and my internal conversations about trying to get poetry published. Either that or the rejection is beginning to get to me.

Saturday and a long lay in. Not until at least 10 o’clock did I rouse and make drinks for myself and partner which, we lay in bed drinking and talking. A sort of weekly catch up. Eventually we get up and have a breakfast at lunchtime. There are the usual chores to do but we are focussed on getting out today as we are going to visit the Astley Book Farm and Coffee Shop. My youngest daughter had recommended it to us knowing my love of books. We take a 40-minute drive to the farm and bump our way down the gravel track to the parking at the farm. What we walked into was book heaven. Barn upon interconnected barn filled with books of every sort. I am just in my element as I explore the shelves, roaming from corridor to corridor taking the occasional book down to look at. I loiter in the poetry section. After a lot of wandering around we took lunch in the yurt. Delicious sausage sandwiches and strawberry milkshake.

After eating our late lunch, we go back to the wandering the book maze and being awed by the range available. I could have spent a fortune, but I had to keep reminding myself of the huge numbers of books we have at home. No room in our house is without books and it’s difficult to find room for new ones. I finally hone down my choice to two books of poetry. I am after all trying to be a poet. My choices are below:

Happy with my new book we drive home and settle down to an evening of films and sandwiches until I am left alone to indulge myself in watching football while I draft the blog. It’s been a good day and I down my night meds adn go off to bed reasonably happy, although I fear the scales in the morning as I have had no training this week due to how crap I have been. If I am brave I will swim tomorrow.

Friday and I’m feeling chipperish. A quick burst of regal misery over breakfast and I head for the Shed to construct a letter. It takes ages to get to the end of it. At lunch time my partner and I eat bagel and beans before she returns to work, and I wander over to the post office to send my letter. The afternoon starts with watering yesterday’s daffodilled pots from which I move onto putting a new cover on the greenhouse. I decide to leave the old cover on and weather tape the frame pole lines so that the new cover will get a softer foundation. I perform an amazing feat of greenhouse cover fitting that makes putting on a duvet cover solo look like child’s play. I am surprised by the ease and the speed with which I complete the task. Go me.

So I move onto other chores like removing the accumulation of dead flies from the dining room light fitting, fitting new corncob bulbs in the inspection lanterns and getting my washing. I am on auto pilot, bored with myself, bored with the world of royal misery and bored with the pain of the fucking chicken egg sized lump my injection has left in me. I’m bored with only being able to perform mundane chores around the house and garden. It’s not like I’ve got that amount of time left to fritter away. I get a call from my sister who tells me how she is and what she has been occupied with of late. We reminisced about our grandfather and the things that she still has of him. He is someone who I would like my children to know more about, he was quite a character. Apparently the extended family at the time clubbed together so he could buy his way out of the army. After having spent almost nine years in India without home leave he was put on notice to go to Ireland, at which point the family decide that my grandmother could not face any more time away from my grandfather. We end our call and I move on.

Pizza bought from the village, drafting the blog and half watching a “psychological” thriller (which at least has the good grace to have a psychologist in it) constitutes the evening. It will whimper away with meds and increasing irritation till I slouch off to be born again, like some second coming.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre   
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere   
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst   
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.   
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out   
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert   
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,   
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,   
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it   
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.   
The darkness drops again; but now I know   
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,   
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,   
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Yeats runs through me, one of my early influences, interesting that he turns up now again in these circumstances and his “The Second Coming” comes so clearly to mind.

Thursday and I get up after a better nights sleep. A simple breakfast and a dose of the current misery TV and I get myself into the garden. I spend all morning tending the pots and raised beds in the front garden. My front pots are now all full of daffodil bulbs. A favourable winter and cosy spring and the pots should look lovely. My partner feeds me a bacon sandwich before she goes to work, yep real travel to a real workplace. I potter changing light bulbs, ordering new ones and playing the toilet roll fairy role for the household. Chores done I go to the Shed and write letters. As I sit writing my eldest daughter messages to say she is coming home as she is feeling ill and duly arrives soon after and goes straight to bed for a nap. I post my letters, sort out a Tesco order and drift into the evening. My partner returns from the gym and we eat and watch Ridley together. As the evening progresses my energy disappears, and I once again become conscious of the injection lump in my gut. I draft the blog and take my meds before bed. All in all, despite my discomfort I have managed to do something that will come to fruition in the Spring, it feels hopeful, which I take to mean that I am gradually recovering. In my case that means getting back to it being as good as it gets again.

Wednesday and I wake up feeling decidedly more chipper than I have been over the last couple of days. What I feel is a sense of relief that I am coming out of my “junkie” like response to my monthly injection. I get up and make breakfast including brewing fresh coffee, a clear signal that I am feeling I have a few more spoons. While having breakfast I set todays blog page up before I run a bath and indulge in some nurturing. I laze for a long time in my bath messaging and reading. The idea of the bath is that it eases the soreness of my injection site, which is red and lumpy. It’s about the size of a small bird’s egg but feels like an Ostrich egg. I was hoping that post bath I would feel the same sense of energy that I woke up with. It turns out not to be so. I felt knackered and complained to a friend who kindly explained that a warm bath raises the heart rate and burns more energy. Live and learn.

At lunch I do not feel like eating but I have the delights of a letter to read. It’s a letter full of thought-provoking stuff and I end up writing notes all over it. I relent and have soup but also open a bag of fudge. A comfort manoeuvre. I reread my letter and make more notes, before I recheck the garden camera to see if my hedgehog had reappeared, it had not. By now I am feeling quite rough again. I re-site the garden camera in the front garden. I am interested to see what roams at the front of the house. The evening creeps up on me so I retreat to football and Shetland. By the end of the evening I’m spent so I down my evening meds and go off to bed hoping that I will have a decent nights sleep. I’m tired of being tired.