Sunday, I wake late thinking Chinchilla and go and weigh myself. I am 0.5 kilos lighter this week at 97.5 kilos. I am surprised but I’m content with this. I think I am settling for keeping my weight stable rather than constantly reducing. When I was reducing down before I was able to train hard, however if I train that hard now I piss blood so there has to be some moderation. I also haven’t cut out all treats like, there needs to be some pleasures in life and for me sweet things are one of them.

I and my partner have coffee in bed and then we get up and make our respective breakfasts. We then make our Sunday face time call to our youngest daughter, who is now 27 weeks pregnant. Its a long chat as we bring each other to speed with what is going on in the respective households as there is much going in both. Preparing for a new baby to arrive, readying the house, managing a recovering grandparent and keeping track of my sisters estate are just a few of the things going on. At the end of the call my partner gets ready to go to the gym intending to drop off a birthday present for our two year old grand niece.

Of course once my partner goes off to the gym I set about mending the under unit kitchen lighting. I run through the usual checks and in the end conclude that it is the actual light housing that is no longer functional. No alternative to going to the local Wickes to pick up a replacement housing. I drive to Wickes clutching the body of the dead light. Once at the store I search the lighting shelves and find the modern equivalent of my dead light. Unfortunately the size I want will not fit the cabinet I want to fix it under s.o I have to look for an alternative, As Wickes do their own version I get two of them and return home with them. I test the replacement before fixing it in place, All goes well and son there is illumination under my previously dark kitchen cabinet, Once again the work surface is fully illuminated. I pack my tools away and settle down to watch international women’s rugby. Wales get turned over by the French as expected. I switch to watching the FA cup semi final. Its couch living, I know and my only excuse is that I have a busy week in front of me.

My couch living goes on into the evening which includes a meal, coffee adn chocolate. I get too full of sweet stuff (I have my limits), and go into the kitchen to clear it. I spend time clearing the kitchen and getting it morning ready before I return to Murder in the First and then meander towards my bed via my meds. I’ve a busy week ahead of me so as always when faced with a busy week I batten down the hatches, watch my diet after a weekend of indulgence and then train hard, write lots and move forward. There is lots of death and illness washing around at the moment and I wonder just how much I have soaked up and made me wonder more about my own situation.

Saturday and I wake up early and make drinks for myself and partner. I read for a while as my partner snoozes. We chat for a while and then I get up and go to the chemists to collect my monthly drugs haul. I put my prescription in on last Sunday and still the chemists have not got all my meds. I come away with just my injection which is due this Friday. the chemist is increasingly under pressure as the new housing estates in the village are placing a bigger demand on the villages infrastructure and services. I return home with a paper and bacon.

My first job is to fill my drugs wallets for the next two weeks. I find I have enough so drugs to do this and soon I am fully loaded for the fortnight to come. There are bacon sandwiches and coffee for breakfast along with some interesting mail. I am pleased to find a letter from a friend in Scotland and put it to one side so that I can give it the time and attention that it deserves. There is also a small box containing fresh pod weed and a larger parcel that yields up my new ice hockey jersey. I wasn’t going to buy anymore ice hockey jerseys but I could not resist an English one for about £20. It puts Milton Keynes into my collection.

First job is to get the pond weed into the pond so I go into the garden and drop it into the pond. While I am there I cut back last years growth on the ferns so that the new growth is freed up. I stake a shrub that has collapsed and then re-net then pond. Back in the house I make another coffee and sit and read my new letter. As always it is full of interesting news, observations adn thoughts. I am not feeling at my best but get ready to go to the garden centre to shop for fruit and veg.

My partner drives us to the garden centre and we shop for our fruit and veg. I’m not feeling particularly good so when we return to shop at the butchers I wait in the car. We return home and I head for the sofa to rest and watch the women’s international rugby match, which leads me onto the FA cup semi final.

An evening of food and Murder in the First, night meds and bed past midnight hoping to be tired enough to sleep deep and peacefully.

Thursday and it starts with one of those phone calls you do not want. The alert service rings to tell me that my partners mother has been found on the floor adn the carer cannot move her. An ambulance has been called. Before I can ring my partner she rings me and new discuss the options given that we are being told that the ambulance could be up to two hours. As it turns out the ambulance arrives and the para medics decide that hospital is the best option. A a result my partner picks up her brother and they go straight to the hospital. They spend the rest of the day there until the evening when eventually they return home with the carer, who I drive back to my partners mothers home, accompanied by my eldest daughter.

As for me I did little apart from retreat to the Shed and write letters and visit the post box. I found the hedgehog food had not been touched so renewed it and made a mental note to check it tomorrow. To my pleasure my new book arrived, another Claire North novel, Notes from the Burning Age. I’m looking forward to finding the time to read it now. I take my night med set the dishwasher going and go to bed.

Friday I’m awake and aware that the household is already up. I have breakfast and then walk down to the local shop to get a paper and to get some cash from the machine before taking my partners car to the garage to fill up and check the tyres. Back home I find there is some solicitors letters to deal with which means another trip to the post office. My new watch straps arrive so I spend some time getting the new strap onto my watch. I have to swap strap bars to do it but I get the job done My partner returns from her physio appointment and then goes off to see her mother in hospital. I continue to draft the blog before getting myself into the garage to train.

The garage can be a hard place sometimes and it took me a while to get going today but I set myself the task of going for an hour on my cruise level. It went okay in the end with me burning 800+ calories.

I get out of the garage and find a message from my partner from the hospital where her mother was admitted last night with reopened fracture of the spine. The message is brief and just says “They are discharging her!” I guess there is now going to be much organising and checking that everything and everyone is in place.

The evening sees my partner returns and me cook tuna pasta for tea. We settle down to a quiet evening evening of TV rugby and Have I Got News for You. I draft the blog and then clear the kitchen before downing my meds and going to bed for an early night.

Wednesday and the sun shines, I feel instantly perkier and get up for breakfast, coffee and my morning meds. My rising goes unnoticed so a little later my partner brings me another coffee mistakenly thinking that I am still in bed. I empty the dishwasher and check my messages and emails. I am sunshine energised so plan a trip to the gym. Kit packed I drive to the gym. Once there I get up on to the gym floor and set a cross trainer up for a 55 minute session. Today I have got Rammstein in my ears, loud and driving which makes the time go by quickly. Its a good session and I burn off 500+ calories over 5+ kilometres.

After my good session I shower and find a comfortable space in the lounge and settle down to a large coffee and egg and bacon bun. I spend time catching up with messages and writing my up to date to do list. A friend sends me a picture of her in her back brace which looks like a super hero outfit. I drive home via a local garden centre. I had thoughts about buying plants for my stock of garden pots but when I wandered round the centre I was not inspired. I came away empty handed and thinking that I would sew more seeds in the green house and grow more of what I want. Once home I update my training and diet journal and watch the end of a snooker match.

My partner returns from seeing her mother and we drift into the evening with a meal, a quick check on the hedgehog food state and then I indulge in another European football match. I need to find a new book to read to rescue me from TV and football. I shall go to my bed tonight having taken my night meds and hoping that tomorrow brings me sunshine, it makes such a difference to me.

It is Tuesday and I have a Four Weddings and a Funeral moment when I wake up to find it is 10 o’clock. I wasn’t expecting that. Just as I am emerging my partner brings me coffee. I bumble around for a bit before making myself a fried egg sandwich and more coffee to wash down my meds. The sofa providers ring to say they cannot deliver our new sofa tomorrow due to sick van drivers. That is so disappointing but we reset the date for Wednesday next week. There is some post to deal with including some items related to my sister’s estate so there is a mini flurry of emails between me and the solicitor.

A some point I pop outside to recycle some papers and notice an array of new flowers that have come out in the sunshine. It constantly amazes me how one day there appears to be nothing and then the next there is a profusion of blooms. Of course I reached for my phone and took pictures.

Lunchtime comes round and I graze and down more coffee before heading for the Shed. I have a missed call, which is always a surprise as I am usually welded to my phone. The Shed has a surprise for me. Out of nowhere a peacock butterfly flaps about. I get pictures but then the butterfly proves to be difficult to get out of the Shed. Eventually I guide it out into the world. Its a lovely creature. I’m hoping for more to appear.

This is the first time I have been in the Shed for a while so I settle in and prepare to write when a friend calls. It is a lovely surprise and we chat for quite a while as she drives home with a new TV. My friend sounds “springish” and is happy that she may soon return to work after a tiring battle with long term COVID. There are signs that eventually her body is beginning to recover its powers of renewal. This good news and been a long time coming so I am really pleased for her. We say farewell and I return to my writing and working. My letters complete I lock up the Shed and take a short walk to the post office to send my missives on their way.

Back home I start up the laptop and begin to draft the blog to the background of the world snooker championships. Tonight there will be European football, and not a lot else, except of course last minute meds.

Monday and I struggle to get out of bed after what feels like a crap nights sleep. Eventually after drifting in and out I finally get up at 10 o’clock and down a bowl of muesli and a coffee along with the morning meds. Apparently I’m going out for lunch. I try to ring the specialist prostate cancer nurse with no joy. I am suspicious as there should be some kind of message service. On checking the number in my phone against the information card I find it is in my phone wrong. I finally redial and get a message service that wants all sorts of identifiers. My message is duly full of information before I get to leave the message I want to leave. Now its another waiting time. My post arrives and every single item is recycling, clearly there is something wrong if all I am doing is throwing the majority of my mail away as junk. To fill the time before I’m taken for lunch I start to draft the blog and in doing so I realise what a cranky mood I am in. Perhaps a cultured lunch in town, the Tesco delivery and a training session will oil the wheels of the chirpier me.

I had forgotten to include over the previous couple of days that I had checked my garden camera for my hedgehog. Not only did I find my hog but I found it with it annual lover. Its quite rare to capture two hedgehogs together as they a solitary beasts and only come together in the spring to mate. Last year I was fortunate enough to get it on camera so I was surprised to get it again this year. Its a sure sign that spring has sprung and indicates that there is still a hedgehog community alive and trying to thrive in the back gardens of Desford.

My partner takes me to lunch in town, actually that’s not quite true as I drive us and pay the bill at the end of the meal. However my salmon starter and tagliatelle bolognaise was tasty and the conversation worthwhile. Once home there is barely time to recover when Tesco comes knocking and delivers. Only one change this week, I get 24 eggs rather than the 18 I ordered as they have run out of boxes of six. Its a random world but I am sure we will eat them.

I return to the sofa and read an article on stereotactic ablative radiotherapy in the Sunday Mail of all places. Apparently a Belfast hospital has found a way of using high dosages of radiotherapy in five sessions as opposed to the usual 20 sessions it takes. They inject a spaceOAR behind the prostate to protect collateral damage to the bowl by the radiotherapy and prevents in continence from the high dosage. I am under no illusions that this will be available to me when I go to my appointment on the 18th of May. I think I am in for the 20 sessions over four weeks no matter what if they accept me for treatment. I guess I take heart that gradually medicine is taking its finger out of men’s arses and doing something useful about prostate cancer.

My partner goes out to meet a friend and to go onto the local speedway meeting. Its a first for her but her friend used to accompany her father to the meetings for years before he recently died. I’m looking forward to the outcome. For my part I am gearing up to go and train despite the fact that my very lunch is having a soporific effect on me.

I always surprised by the way I can distract myself from doing the difficult things. This evening I chose to clean the windows in the lounge. In fairness to me I am fed up with looking at the windows and thinking I’ve fallen foul of glaucoma. I rummage through a cupboard and find the relevant cleaner and then set to. The difference is blinding enough for a St Paul effect. Satisfied I go and get into my training gear but even then then the resistance is there so I decide to look at what is on at our local concert hall. There is a concert that has both Schehrazade and Rachmaninov’s piano concerto No.2 in it. Irresistible so I book tickets. A night of wordless brain feed, what could be better. I finally make it into the garage still feeling sickly full of my lunch and the pineapple juice I washed it down with. I set the session for an hour on my “jogging” level and set off. There was a point when I thought I wasn’t going to make it with out throwing up but I got through it and ended up doing a reasonable session once my stomach had closed down. So over 12k and 800+ calories burned. That will do nicely.

Cool down takes place on the sofa while I up load the pictures to the blog and continue to draft it. My evening will now drift as I recover. This drifting will see me lounge and fill my environment with the equivalent of culture fast food, trash media and thoughtless wall paper until my partner returns from her first speedway meeting.

When all is said and done the only thing that actually mattered today was that I got a response to the message I left for the specialist prostate cancer nurse. My required scan referral has been made and accepted but yet to be dated. So far so good then.

Saturday is a poetry, cooking and eating day. I am up early, breakfasted and then I am busy cooking. I beaver away putting the nights meal into the crockpot, its a chicken Tagine filled with goodies like apricots and olives. I am ready to flick the switch dead on 11 o’clock. Morning cooking over I head for the shower and then get my partner to plait my hair. I drive to the Quaker meeting house where the poetry stanza meets every for months. I am very early and settle in to prepare when a new person arrives and we chat till others arrive. Once the Stanza is assembled we get to work for the next two and half hours we read, read out loud and reflect upon each others work. I think mine was well received and there were some real gems amid the work presented. After the Stanza ends I head for the supermarket and get the remaining ingredients for the evening meal. On arriving home I find the table laid and ready for our guests.

I set to work getting the courses I prepared yesterday ready for serving. I am efficient and effective so with 30 minutes to go before our guests arrive I have a time out on the sofa. Our friends arrive and I swing in to action. We sit and dine on pea and pesto soup, chicken tagine, Bailey’s tiramisu (acclaimed by all as excellent), followed by cheese, coffee and chocolates. Best of all is the conversation between old friends that ranges over all sorts of topics. By midnight we are all flagging and we wave our guests good night. The dishes get stacked but not washed. I down some lemon squash adn go to bed with out taking my meds.

Sunday and I am awake and fresh at 7 o’clock. If this is the way to get a good nights sleep then I shall leave off taking my night meds more often. I head to the kitchen and clear it setting the dishwasher on its way. I return to my partner with tea and we sit and chat for a while. Bacon sandwiches follow and then a trip to see our local ducks. A refreshing walk before an afternoon of watching rugby, emptying the dishwasher and then a drift into the evening with its meal, TV beavers and drugged up Dickens. I can stand no more and take to drafting the blog. I expect I will return to my sensible self and take my night meds tonight. I shall weigh myself tomorrow morning as I did not today suspecting that my indulgence over the last 24 hours has done me no favours.

Friday and an early morning coffee in bed while I check my emails and messages. Once that I feel I am up to speed with my socials I get dressed adn go down stairs for breakfast. Today I am a man with a mission, there are dishes to be prepared for our guests tomorrow so that I can go to the poetry stanza meeting tomorrow afternoon. I have already got the ingredients in it should just be a matter of making the dishes. Of course everyone else in the house choose that moment to make toast and protein drinks so I retreat to the TV until I’ve got free reign in the kitchen.

Nigella is providing the courses that I am preparing this morning. A splendid Baileys infused Tiramisu and a warming pea and pesto soup. So for the vast majority of the morning I juggle ingredients adn perform cooking skills I did not know I have. There are moments of panic when the instructions say “fold in to a mousse like consistence” and what sits in the bowl refuses to “fold in” and forces the executive decision to use a whisk. Just how long do you soak Savoiardi in the coffee and Baileys mixture? Clearly when it disintegrates into an unmanageable pulp the dunking has gone on too long. One other thing I learnt was that my square dish is slightly narrower at the bottom than the top, which led me to discover that you can cut the ends off Savoiardi with a pair of scissors. I admit I am a very organised by bloody grumpy cook. I am one of those people that lays all the ingredients out and then gets to work. My problem is opening the kitchen cupboards and finding chaos which means hunting around stuff to find what I actually need. However I do eventually get to where I need to be, or rather the food does. Once I have one dish chilling in the fridge waiting only for its final dusting before serving I clear the decks and then prepare for the next one.

The next dish is simple in itself but the amounts need to be scaled up to feed all of the diners. So there is some sums to do and some careful weighing out to be done before I can get things going. Once underway it does not take long to prepare, I just have to juggle the final blending. Mission successful, after a suitable cooling period everything goes into the fridge to chill. Again I clear the decks and then indulge in a lunchtime dish of chicken soup.

It is raining, it has rained all morning, I hate it when it does this as I cannot get out into the garden. I do some on line shopping and then chat to a friend who has just come out of hospital after falling off her horse. We chat for a while about how we are and plans for the future. She faces a period of enforced rest and no driving while her back heals encased in a brace. I find I am cold and decide to train. I always find it more difficult to motivate myself when I am cold so getting myself upstairs to change in to my kit is a real effort but I do it. I decide that today I will row for just 30 minutes but will increase the resistance. I strap in and set off and immediately feel the the difference in the pull required. It turns out to be a good session as I manage more than 6 kilometres and more than 400 calories.

I record the session in my training and food journal and then change into some evening closes and return to the sofa. I eat tea and start to draft the blog while the TV provides wallpaper. I shall watch a rugby match and then the new series of Have I Got News for You. Night meds and bed.

Thursday, and I wake up after what feels like a decent nights sleep. My fitness App does not agree but it says it was better than yesterday, that will do me. There is silence in the house. There is no no work chatter noise coming from the office downstairs which means my partner has gone to real drive a car to work work again. I languish in bed and check my messages and emails adn exchange a few early morning pleasantries with some people. I move onto booking a Tesco slot for Monday and filling my shopping basket. So the basics are sorted by the time I get up and wander downstairs for breakfast. I try to ring the specialist prostate nurse to chase my next scan appointment up. There was no answer, I assume that this is a biproduct of the junior doctors being on strike. I will try later or leave it till the strike is over. I sense a FUBAR coming on.

I clear the kitchen, empty Daisy the dishwasher and tidy up a bit before trying the specialist prostate nurse again more in hope than expectation. Of course there is no answer. I have options and consider training before anything else but I realise that I have acquired a strange habit, namely that I do not train until the postman has been. Whether I am living in some sort of perpetual expectation of something important or I am using it as a form of procrastination I am not sure. I know that when I am trying to plan my day and organise myself its the thought of having to change clothes again to train that is an obstacle, I just get a sense that it would be nice to go through a day in one set of clothes. Saying it out loud makes it sound odd but when I am trying to juggle a restricted number of energy spoons over a day it makes more sense. I try to be as ergonomically efficient as I can over the course of the day, experience tells me that energy expenditure tends to be like buses, turning up in bunches rather than well ordered singles at regular intervals. As it turns out I sit and start to draft the blog as I was finding that if I leave it to last thing at night I am tired and produce dour and lifeless content.

I walk down to the village shop with my eldest daughter and then onto the village café where we eat lunch and chat at length about research and PhD issues. We indulge in additional coffee cake before walking home. My Amazon goodies have arrived so I am in possession of all I need to make tiramisu. I change into my training kit and head for the garage. I can feel myself running out of spoons so I settle for a 45 minute session. Despite me feeling tired I I manage 600+ calories and the expected 9 kilometres.

The garden guy arrives as I am recovering in the lounge, fortunately my partner has returned from work and can give him coffee and money. He mows the grass, the first cut this year. It always makes a big difference to the look of the garden so tomorrow I shall give myself some Shed time, before I set about my cooking plan. I eat my evening meal and settle down to watch two football matches one after the other. Its a European night, which is no excuse, but the evening is mindless until I return to the blog. I finish for the day, take my meds and go to bed hoping for another reasonable nights sleep.

Wednesday and I wake up, check my fitness App to see what it says about last nights sleep as I made the effort to go to bed early. My sleep score is down to 68, apparently even though I got 9 hours 47 minutes sleep its not good. Apparently my deep sleep time was normal but my regularity is low and my awake time is 32 minutes with four interruptions in the night. My App appears to make no allowance for the fact that my prostate cancer means I get up every two to three hours to piss and that a good hot flush will wake me up in a sweat. So I digest the information and check my messages. There is a message about friend who it turns out has fallen off her horse and acquired a compression fracture of her spine. She is in hospital waiting tests and will probably be in a brace for a while. I of course send a message to my friend gently joshing her. I’ve always had reservations about one species riding on the back of another species.

I get up and go and have breakfast, open the post and take in the day. Its overcast and looks like rain, so I have another coffee and Amoretti while pondering what I am going to do. I clear the kitchen, pack my gym kit and dress. I return to the kitchen and prepare the nights meal popping everything in to the crockpot. I am waiting for my partner to go to visit her mother on her regular Wednesday visit after which I intend to go to the gym but in the meantime I start todays blog. My life is not exciting but neither is it without stimulation, its the “noise” that I find increasingly irksome, perhaps if I was busier I would not notice but I retired not to be busy. It raise questions of purpose and meaning, neither of which particularly interest me anymore. It is as it is, like love or the pouring rain that is now falling.

I go to gym via the petrol station and then via the big Sainsburys to buy the rest of the ingredients for Saturdays meal. It took me hours as I could not find the Savoiardi. They were in neither the biscuit nor the cake isle but tucked away with coffee and tea accompaniments. Finding expresso coffee that I understood took a while to, but I got there eventually having mastered the roasting scale. I proceeded to the gym where I got myself a cross trainer and set off on a 50 minute session. I had no music and once again fell back on my fantasy world. Boringly won the world cup twice in a row again. It was a reasonable session but it took me time to recover before I went back to the changing rooms. Any way I burnt 500+ calories so that will do.

I showered and washed my hair which made me feel much better, strangely. In the lounge I ordered a large black coffee and on a vaguely Easter whim indulged in a mini egg cookie. I thought it fitted in with my muesli and Amoretti diet. Any way I sipped my coffee appreciatively and nibbled away at my treat, before driving home.

Once home I unpacked my shopping, dumped damp kit in the laundry basket and checked the crockpot to make sure the meal was coming along nicely. I have an urge to spend tomorrow cooking. I settle down to draft more of the blog before tea. My evening will be food followed by football, meds and bed. I am beginning to dread the nights, I do not wake up refreshed and it takes me a while to get going. My nights are interrupted and the pleasure I used to get from sleep is no longer there. I think it is a combination of mental stuff (technical term) and my meds. My periods of deep and rewarding sleep seem to come late in the night, in fact the early morning. I am hoping that as Spring turns in to a globally warmed sweltering summer that things may improve. I like the sun and the heat, I can see why the ancient Egyptians made such a big deal out of the sun. Before I go I want to recommend a film. 3000 Years of Longing with Tilda Swinton and Edris Elba. Its a brilliant film if only to watch the performances. Its on Amazon Prime. A woman meets a Djinn and has three wishes, what would yours be, be careful Djinns and wishes can be tricky.