Thursday and 2 days into November and I wake up after a better nights sleep. I do my routine message, mail, account and cyber litter check. There is a scam “Amazon” text saying someone who knows my password is trying to access my account so press on the link. Bollocks really, if they know my password they will be in my account no problem. I check my Amazon account and all is well. As a rule of thumb I delete everything I am not expecting. The last time I did that I discovered it was actually my bank trying to stop a debit card fraud, but as I rang them to check if it was them I did the right thing. My basic dictum is “the bastards just want my money” and just refuse to engage with any thing or anybody unless its on my terms. Excitement over I read some of Carlo Rovelli’s White Holes. As ever it is an easy read about mind blowing cosmological concepts, I am tempted to stay in bed to read but get up to do my vitals and have breakfast.

As I sit dipping soldiers into boiled eggs the local parcel delivery guy delivers my new shoe rack for the porch. I naturally think that this is going to be a struggle but I set to work constructing it with the COVID enquiry going on in the background. One has to admire just how smooth and slippery Kings Counsel and the witnesses are, such carefully chosen words and such menace. The new shoe rack goes together without a hitch to my delight. The moment of truth comes when I look to slot it into the space in the porch, which I had measured several times, but you never know. Ta Da it fits perfectly and shoe chaos is turned in to beautiful organisation in a moment. It is lovely when we the opposable thumbed ones over come their environment and indulge their obsessive need to make order out of chaos.

I of course show it off to my partner and on the basis of the satisfaction with the change we contemplate a similar solution for the other pile of shoes and boots that litter the other side of the porch. We decide that a similar solution is required so I set about measuring up and searching for an appropriate solution. Its sods law that the space is a strange size so the hunt for a suitable solution is prolonged. In the end I find a best approximation and order it. So hopefully very soon the remaining porch shoe chaos can be turned in to an obsessives dream.

I break for lunch and watch more of the COVID enquiry as the lawyers screw down the civil servants and politicians. It is the subtlest of subtle knife wielding as they pass the blame around. It would appear that those with long COVID were always going to get a rotten deal. It would also appear that there is a game between the clinicians, civil servants and politicians of “not me gov but them”. There is an indecent scrabble for the moral high ground and who can play with words the most. I love the guy who kept saying “it was more nuanced”. I have no doubt I shall use it myself at some point in the future. I feel myself flagging and make myself get changed and go to the garage to train. Its that time of year when the garage starts to get chill, it was down to 11 degree by the time I start my forty five minute row. I am determined to try and reach my usual standard but I feel grim as I start out. I get to the end and I am pleased to have got to my 9K target and exceed 600 calories. By the time I get to the end I am done in fact I am over done, my spoon count has gone into the red.

I change and make it to the sofa to record the session in my journal just as my partner returns from seeing her mother. For me it is time to update the blog have tea and then read more of Carlo Rovelli. It is also time to update my spread sheet of my vitals so that I can track my average blood pressure response to the chemo drugs. I expect I shall be lured to TV at some point, what I do know is that I shall be taking my night meds and getting myself to bed early in order to be ready to give my blood sample tomorrow morning. Yep its blood monitoring time in the cycle. A long day as I usually stay up and wait for the results to be posted.