Wednesday and another night of soreness from Mondays injection. Sometimes, especially when injected on the right, I lose a couple of days and it seems this is one of those occasions. However I need to make the effort today as I am having my nails done again at noon, at least that is what I thought until I checked my phone. I have a text message timed at 03: 15 on Wednesday night telling me not to forget my appointment for 12 o’clock tomorrow, clearly meaning Thursday. So when the Spa opens I ring and leave a message to ask if this is correct. I then get on with taking my vitals and having breakfast. I am generally puttering around when I get a call at 11:30 from the Spa person confirming my appointment is for today. I drop what I was doing (oiling the windows and putting key rings on the window lock keys) and dash off to the Spa at the gym.

I sit down and present my hands so that the old gel can be removed. Some magic solution is paced on a piece of pad adn clipped to each of my finger tips. Then make conversation with the beautician. We cover the weather, Indian festivals and their relation to both the weather and the Kings Coronation, about rehabilitation and housing for miscreants and the nature of criminality. So with the niceties out of the way my nails are cleaned and new layers of gel painted on while we discuss family, grandchildren and international travel.

Each layer requires that my hand is briefly baked in a small finger oven and while I do this we continue our chat through the issues of the day. I am finally finished and have gelled and shiny nails. It takes quite a while but is relatively affordable so I an going to need to brush up on my conversational Spa talk. Once home I suggest to my partner that we go to lunch, which we duly do. Its a real luxury just being able to drop things and just go and eat some where. By the time we return home there is time to do some gardening. We put into action some of the things we discussed over lunch, so my partner plants the remainder of the plants to be planted and I trim the ferns back and gather up armfuls of “sticky Willie” weed from around the pond. There is of course staking to be done and bulb cutting back to follow on. By the early evening quite a lot has got done. The cars are repositioned on the drive for tomorrows early departures and then its time for tea.

The evening sees me close up the newly oiled windows and put last years industrial sized fan back in position in the lounge. With that all set I draft the blog feeling the oscillating gusts of cooling wind from the fan. No doubt I shall watch Race Across the World as I know one of the contestants and then it will be an early night as tomorrow I am going to see my hand physiotherapist for the last time take my partner car to the garage, supervise the garden guy adn of course vote in the local elections. Somewhere in there I need to train and get back into stride until the next interruption by the next injection. At the back of my mind there are two things that May brings, firstly an oncology review adn secondly the preparation of the fourth collection of poetry in the Cancer Years series, but this time with a British publishing preparation group. So I move on into May taking my night meds, wearing my nocturnal finger splint and hoping all goes well.