Thursday arrives and I am awake early for me. I check my cyber litter and messages and then get up. Before long I am walking down to get a paper and then on to the village café for breakfast. I settle down and tuck into to both the crosswords and the breakfast. Its a treat for me and I sit in the window and watch my village as I listen to the various people who pop into the café for their cobs and take away breakfast boxes. Once I have finished the crosswords I meander home and take my vitals before getting my vitals spreadsheet up to date. Having got up to date I start the work on my second poetry collection in anticipation of the first one going to plan. It is my Hotels and Restaurants collection, which have to admit has its darker moments and some quite acidic times. I clearly did not think much of Hull or Middlesbrough but I doubt anyone is going to read them anyway. This is after all is vanity poetry. While I am doing this my two new baseball caps arrive. These are the result of a conversation in which my partner said she never knew when I was available for a conversation or not. Jokingly she suggested I should have hats that told her when I am available. Well I’ve taken her at her word and today they arrived. So now I can be undisturbed or available as I like.

Einstein requested that his first wife stopped talking to him if he requested it. This was one amongst many conditions that were made as his relationship with his first wife fell apart. Clearly Einstein was a real bastard but I think it is helpful to let people know if you are “in” or “out”. I like to think my hats are more like Granny Weatherwax’s notice of “I ain’t dead” which she displayed when she was off possessing animals. She always had trouble retuning from bees as it left her head in a buzzing condition when she retuned fully to herself. I clearly have times when I am “out” when I am writing or trying to think through things in my head, or just following an idea or fantasy. My partner likes them so we will see how they work. I sit drafting the blog wearing “I am out” of course. I’ve no doubt that should a real crisis arrive my “I Am Out” state will be overridden. Note the colour coding, red and green, the closest I could get to having a traffic light implanted in my forehead. So much done and its only 13:50 .

I return to my poetry and begin to work on my Herod’s Children collection. A small collection, but everyone of them has been rejected for publication or competition. So I am going to publish my failures as an act of defiance to the poetry industry and a true piece of vanity publishing. I would not mind being the Florence Foster Jenkins (born Narcissa Florence Foster) of vanity poetry. Unlike her I would understand the mockery, she was by all accounts well named as Narcissa, although many think she knew exactly what she was doing. Apparently she trained in opera and thought that smoking, booze and debauchery ruined her voice. They flocked to Carnegie Hall to hear her. Two days after Carnegie Hall she had a heart attack and died two months later. That bit I do not intend to copy.

I finish what I am doing and find myself up stairs with my training kit bag open in front of me. Instinctively I pull on some gear, plug my ear buds in and head for the garage, with the the words of the oncologist ringing in my ears, “once you stop its difficult to start again” and ” exercise is the best way to counter the drug side effects”. Once in the garage note the rower display is blank. Its a heart sink moment, I really can’t be arsed to be pissing around with batteries and a screw driver. Muttering “FFS” I slap the display and miraculously springs into life, it clearly realises I’m in no mood to be buggered about. I strap in, set the controls and fitness tracker for 30 minutes and get going. Christ this is hard work is my over whelming feeling, everything bloody hurts and it takes me a while to get into a rhythm but I keep going. I make it to the end of the thirty minutes and I also make 6 kilometres! This is a big surprise.

I get back to the warmth of the lounge and record the session in my journal. I count back to the last time I trained and I am shocked to find it is 48 days. Not since the 16th of November have I trained. In fairness to me there has been a lot of crap happen in that time but I am taken aback by the time. Its little wonder that this session was so much hard work and makes getting to 6+ kilometres a good out come. I am so delighted to have come through this session that I am inclined to have a 0% Captain Morgan’s spiced rum and coke and a wedge of Pantone. What a find Captain Morgan’s 0% rum is, I can rum and coke to my hearts content and as it is on offer at £10 a bottle at Tesco its an affordable indulgence.

Time to change and transition into the evening, where hopefully we shall eat and find something to entertain me as I am out of spoons now. I expect the Americans doing stuff on my book (just cannot get over that) may send stuff over in the night as they are at least eight hours behind us, so I might get a late email with material to review. For today having trained will have to do me. Tomorrow I need to follow up with more rowing. Go me. Friends tell me that schools are still out, which feels appropriately Christmassy and something to celebrate, school did nothing for me as a dyslexic in the 50’s and 60’s. I was up the back plating raffia while the normals did real school work and learning. Yorkshire education authority did not recognise dyslexia as a thing in those days , typically bloody minded, ignorant and tight fisted Yorkshire. Today I would have been labelled neuro divergent and provided with all sorts of techno goodies and green gel sheets. However here I am with a blog. Go me again.