Friday was a day of readjustment. I had risen early to prepare for a trip into town to visit the optician. Having made the effort to get up and have breakfast after removing my finger night splint and the magic gel strip that is supposed to be making my operation scars disappear, my partner and I drove into town. We parked up in a car park that must be the most urine smelling car park in the world, I suppose being next to a dance school called Addict should be a clue as to the numbers of ne’er do wells that hang around the stair wells doing drugs and pissing. The town centre is a forlorn and barren place really with its closed shops, nail bars and run emporiums. Lots of food and drink places that sustain visitors and the mageirocophobics (fear of cooking) but all a bit seedy, or maybe the people just look seedy and give the shops a bad look.

I check in at Vison Express and get shown to a sofa and asked to wait. This express might not be so express as advertised. I get called into the clever machine room that shines a very bright light into my eyes and blow air into them. I am then returned to my sofa to await the optician. I get asked all the usual stuff about age and health, drugs and family history and then she looks at my last eye test. 2015 apparently, I knew it had been a while but not that long but in my defence: I don’t have one. The optician plonks a viewer on my face and away we go with the “which is the clearest 1 or 2” and “which line of text can you read”. We go through it all and then she shows me the results from the clever machine room. I have heathy eye balls in almost every aspect apart from a tiny bit of cataract formation, (normal for my age), however I have gone from being short sighted to long sighted. My prescription is very different from my last one, but then am not surprised after ten years.

What follows could be a long drawn out process of describing selecting what new frames I am going to have but I’m a bloke I select my frames pretty sharpish, while my partner mulls over various options for herself, pausing briefly to comment on a blue pair of frames I was toying with. After having selected what I want came the paper work and the interminable sales stuff. However as I can get these over two years at zero percent interest and twenty percent off I sign up to the plan, which also means I can get free stuff in the future. I sign on the cyber pad and leave to await an email telling me my new Ferraris and Emporio glasses are ready.

After a lunch out I head for home where I learn that the opportunity to read poetry publicly has gone by the board as the organisers of the event have turned the proposal down but have put in an open mike session. I’ve no idea how that works so I will go and watch and see how it works and then consider a future one. I do some organising as the evening creeps up. There is Pennyworth to watch and then night meds to take and get myself to bed.

Saturday arrives and to be honest I do very little other than watch rugby and football, of course the garden guy arrives so there is flower bed planning to do. He also tells us that he is to be a father, which is lovely as he seems so happy. The sun shines and that means I get out to take the covers off the garden furniture and begin to assess the state of the patio and how much cleaning there is to do. But the highlight of the day was finding and booking a break away. Finding an apartment in our favourite holiday place was a real bonus. My partner and I are desperate for a break and to get ourselves by the sea. I will be interested to see if the summer time ice cream van comes out in March and whether the eating places are open, if they are not then we will be eating seagull for a week. The evening was the consumption of more Pennyworth, night meds and bed once I had clipped on my night finger splint with its magic gel strip.

Sunday and I wake quiet early and determined to train. After my usual hot water and meds I get into my training gear and get ready to row. I massage my operation scars with Nivea crème in preparation to row and head for the garage and the rowing machine. I strap in and set my session for an hour. Its a bit of a gamble given my hand but I feel I need to push myself and try and kick start some proper training and some weigh loss. So I start off slowly and just try to keep going. By the end of the session I am very tired but very pleased to get to the end. Only when I go to photograph the monitor do I realise that I have only rowed for 59 minutes! I am not sure how this happened but their you go as sessions go it was okay.

I record my session and then change into a pair of shorts and sit in the front garden to sip a drink and to recover from the session. I spend a lot of time sunning myself and hoping that doing this is topping up my vitamin D levels. I am joined by my partner and we sun ourselves, until its time to watch England against Italy in the rugby. Its a good match for the first half but England ran off with it in the second half. I realise that the blog needs to be brought up to date so I settle down to recall what I’ve done over the past two days. There are of course holes where I have pottered or puttered about. This Sunday evening I shall watch more of Pennyworth and head to my bed early as I can feel my energy running out. Tomorrow is the day I get the pleasures of the chiropodist as I move into a week of activity, somehow the days are becoming more spoon demanding.