Friday and I wake knowing my first task of the day is to get to the GP to have my bloods taken. My partner brings me a coffee before I get up and dress and find time to do my first set of vitals for the day. I walk down to the GP equipped with my bloods form but as I enter the reception area I realise I am not wearing a mask. I rummage through my jacket pockets and come up with my “just in case” mask and take a seat. I barely have time to read my book when I am called in. To my delight my veins continue to be cooperative and offer themselves up with no resistance to the needle. In a trice I am done and heading towards the local co-op to get a paper. A few minutes later I am seated in the local village café doing the crosswords and waiting for my full English breakfast and coffee. Its a while since I’ve done this and I am pleased I have made the effort as I tuck into the food and do the crosswords. I realise that I have left my phone at home but despite that I compete both crosswords, go me! Sauntering home I plan my day, which is a mistake really as it means that things can go wrong. As Spike Milligan said “I plan nothing, that way nothing goes wrong”, It is a sunny day but I rest a while on the sofa to start the draft blog and watch the COVID enquiry but find it does not sit on a Friday.

I spend my morning reading Carlo Rovelli’s White Holes, which I finish. He writes delightfully about complex ideas and clearly enjoys the writing. The production of the print in the book is a bit idiosyncratic as there are frequent “i” for “I” and the start of sentences are often lacking a Capital letter but for a dyslexic these things feel normal at some level, it is the ideas that count. So now I have a basic grasp of the idea of black holes bouncing and forming white holes with lower horizons than the original black hole and how the time maybe related to an unbalanced past state to a flow into the current state. All good stuff, it seems to chime in strangely with the ethical philosophy I have been reading of late.

I see the Amazon man deliver and hope it is the next instalment of combating the porch shoe chaos. Before that I have several goes at getting an email with an attachment sent to the lawyers to deal with related to my sisters estate. Gas bills after death, another thing to hand on but I eventually get my email to accept the attachment and it goes off into the ether. Having waved farewell to a gas bill I get to grips with building the new shoe rack for the porch. I get the first four bars into one end and realise that I will knacker my wrists if I persist with this method. The rails are so tight to fit that it will take all my effort and remaining spoons to complete the job, if at all. I seek out my trusty soft headed floor laying hammer and some silicon lubricant and set to work. Once again opposable thumb creature overcomes the environment. I triumph eventually and begin to reorganise shoes and boots until my partner takes pity on me and together with my eldest daughter they sort out the pile of footwear into so some sort of order and cast away those that no longer bring them joy. I return to the blog and and enjoy the transformation.

Its a good job well done. I am out of spoons now and look forward to an easy evening of TV and a meal, perhaps a rugby game. As I had bloods done this morning I might get the results late tonight. I usually stay up to get them but today I am not sure, I am quite anxious about what they will be like. I am five cycles in now and due to start the sixth cycle in five days time, I just hope my PSA has fallen otherwise cycle six will be a waste of time and bad news. The wind will blow again and my dandelion clock become less again.

At midnight the blood results come in. The news is good, my PSA has dropped again. In general the whole profile is good. There is a drop out of the normal range in my platelets but not too far of the normal range. I caste the results up into a grid, update the blog and go to bed.