Thursday and I wake to be quickly the only one home. I shower and sort out a couple of light weight ice hockey jerseys before making breakfast and taking my morning meds. It is a leisurely morning until the post arrives where I find a fresh blood form from the hospital. As my oncology review has been pushed on a week I assume they need an “in range” set of bloods in case doing Cycle 9 is an option. I ring the GP surgery who are very obliging and find me an appointment for Monday morning. With that done I ring the boiler maintenance service and book the boilers annual service I feel like I am on a roll. I make the mistake of opening the rest of my post and reading this seasons Poetry Review and the news letter that comes with it. Some of the content makes me “miffed”, a term used by an ex client when describing how he felt when discovering that his wife was having an affair. He later committed murder in his lunch break declaring that he still felt “miffed”. Anyway it prompted me to write something.

543
Dr John Cooper Clarke,
People accuse me all the time
Of being accessible...
My ears prick up at accuse!
So its poor poetry to be accessible?
What is craved is the obscure, 
the veiled,
the smart arsed, uninteligble,
sickenling, egocentric over
intellectualised clap trap 
that indulges airy fairy 
whimsicality of an aesthete
who cannot look you in the poetic eye
and say this is it.
I am saved by 
Foyle’s Young Poets anthology
where youths eye
is not turned away,
raw and rugged 
and very accessible.
But oh woe
the adults cannot resist slapping,
Content warning, graphic imagery or
Content warning, allusion to suicide
all over the work of the young.
And there you have my loathing 
of the poetry industry.
Killing the thing it loves 
with a kiss like the coward it is. 
						543 25-06-2026

I am saved from my rage by a phone call from a friend who is out and about hunting shoes for her children and a tent for herself and partner. we talk for a long time about children developing and growing and how our families are at the moment. Its really good to chat and hear about others family and how the world is working for them. It is also good to hear a fiend sounding well and energetic, although the usual tired from parenting a bright young family. At the end of the call I am ready to take on the task of trying to book my car in for a service, sounds simple but if course it is not. I ring the dealership where I bought the car to confirm that they also did the service. They say they do despite the fact that their web site booking system says they do not. I go to the web booking system and all goes well until the actual day of the service needs to be selected. I am offered the first available on the 1st of July , a day on which I am busy. The booking system does not allow me to select an alternative day unless I want to “drop off” or have a courtesy car. In the end I give up, open a beer and go and sit on the garden swing seat felling I have done enough for one day.

After a while gently swinging in the garden I add some more support to the ever growing sunflowers. Its getting to the point where I might need to introduce even taller support canes. No sign of flower buds yet but the Dahlias that have come through are going mad. I am joined by my eldest daughter, returned from work and chats about what is going on at the university. She is now a proud owner of a name badge that has Dr in front of her name. W\e are soon joined by my partner and her friend who have been out to play crazy golf and lunch. We chat for a while until I unreel the hose pipe so that my partner can water the garden, during which I head indoors to draft the blog and open the package of new cargo shorts that have been delivered.

My partner and friend go out to dine and leave me typing before I put my cottage pie, a gift from my partner, into cook. This evening there is world cup football later and I need to plan a trip in the car as it told me when I checked its mileage that my battery is getting low and I need to not leave it on the drive for any longer than three days. The sooner the better is my thought, so I might get up early tomorrow and go for breakfast at a far away garden centre. However first there is football, night meds and bed to do.