Tuesday and its my eldest daughters birthday. Of course we watch the Olympics together for the morning and then lunch lightly. I get myself ready to train and head for the shed. I’ve decided to go with the bike today, a gentle turn over for the legs to give them a break from the rower. So I clamber aboard and go for a gentle hour. It turns out a reasonable session.

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I am dripping sweat and sitting on the sofa recoding the session in my journal when both my partner’s brother and the garden guy turn up. It coincidentally starts to rain. I excuse myself and get out of my training gear and then make the garden guy a tea before settling down to a couple of alcohol free beers with my brother in-law. We chat about how we are both waiting on the medical profession to make decisions and general family stuff. My partner joins us and we talk more family business. He had walked round, but now its throwing it down so I give him a life home.

The garden guy leaves a bit later and we sit down to a birthday tea with the traditional present and card opening. I blow my austerity week with a large wedge of coffee sponge cake. We settle down to more Olympics but I notice that when I go for a pee that there is some blood, just like previous times after really hard cycle sessions. As the evening goes on it clears, once again like previous occasions. What is clear is that it takes less effort on the bike to induce some blood in the urine. What ever is going on it is probably related to the rise in PSA so its timely that I am going through new scans and have an oncology appointment in the near future. Tired I reach the end of the evening and take myself to bed.

Wednesday and its breakfast followed by the Olympic catch up. Once I had breakfasted I retreat to the Shed to write letters. I tried to fill my new triple ink well straight from the ink bottle. That was a tragic mistake which just created a mess which took time to clear up and prompted me to order a filler bottle and some more ink. I finally get to write my letters. I get post that tells me I have a new CT scan date, so I shall return from holiday and then get scanned on Monday. I get to lunch time and decide to bring the bin in and find it is stinking and rancid so end up hosing it out in the garden. One of life’s surprise jobs. An omelette lunch and then a walk across to the post box before I get ready to train. I take a call from my friend on holiday and discover that it is raining up north. Its going to be a hard session on the rower, its time to find out how hard a full resistance session is. So I get changed and make my way to the garage to train. My expectations are met, its bloody hard but I make it and I am surprised that I have rowed further at this level than my personal best at the lower level of resistance above maximum. Go me.

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Well being pleased with myself I take a bath to ease my muscles and then sit down to tea. Time to write the blog and to watch Baptiste. Tomorrow is all work.

Monday, the Olympics is of course still going strong but today is a work day. I do breakfast and settle down to listen to a podcast by Sophie Ellis about her work and research into the role of prison psychologists over history. Its a very interesting listen and takes me up to the time of my interview. Sophie starts me off and I am away. I just talk and talk because I can about a lot of people who I knew and worked with and at some level miss. The time went very quickly and it was soon time to wind up and do the pleasantries. A quick coffee and I am back in front of my laptop and in a meeting with a set of services doing a review of the enabling environment progress. Some are doing well despite the COVID difficulties, others are facing real challenges. The attrition rates on some staff has been high and as a result the progress has been lost and a new process put in place to restart the journey. I ring the hospital to rearrange the appointment that has come through for my CT scan. Sods law it fell in the holiday week. So I now wait for a new date having given them my availability.

Its my eldest daughters birthday tomorrow so I take a trip to the garden centre to buy her favoured cake and pasta dish. On my return home I find that Tesco have delivered and finish off the squirrelling away of the goodies. My partner and daughter go off to see a friend in the village. I head for the garage and the rower. This is the start of my austerity week to get fit for next weeks holiday. The goal is to be 92 kilos again by weigh in on Sunday.

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It takes me a while to recover, this was a tough session, but I am glad that I made the effort. Dinner follows and what seems like endless Olympic highlights play in the background. The rest of my evening will be wrapping presents and resisting more food.

Saturday and its all Olympics from morning to night. After an initial Olympic blast, breakfast and waving our youngest daughter off my partner and I set to and clean the house in an attempt to clear the house for the week. After a veritable orgy of hoovering, dusting, polishing and putting away I moved onto cleaning out the fish tank. An hour later the fish are waving out the clear front of their tank and generally joining in the social milieu of the lounge. The evening gets taken with a film, “Domino” an appalling film but based on the life of Domino Harvey, a woman born in Hammersmith, London and after time as a DJ ended up in America as a bounty hunter. She died as a young woman from an overdose. Her life story sounds intriguing but the film that used her as a vehicle was a sad parody. Perhaps one day someone will make a more honest film about her.

Sunday and its more early morning Olympics over breakfast. It is disturbingly addictive even when the Brit looses. However life cannot be all TV sport so I relocate the track camera in the garden and clear some of the pond weed. My partner and I indulge in a scone and then head for her mothers. I take my tools and set about trying to mend a couple of broken light weight hoovers. I sit quietly trying to sort out whether I can cannibalise the two machines but ultimately I end up using glue and tape to make a usable single unit.

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We return home after coffee and biscuits and set about having an evening meal before I settle down to write the blog and wait for the next episode of Baptiste.

Tomorrow is a full day for me with interviews and work sessions. I tip toe towards my next oncology appointment not sure of direction or whether what I am doing is helping. It makes keeping the routine of looking after myself hard. I need to suck it up and grit my teeth and make this coming week one of strict diet and training before we go away for a weeks break. I need to reassert my control over my intake and keep my discipline, there is a battle to be fought. There is no winning this but it is how it is fought that counts. I must not let myself lose sight of time.

Thursday and I am up and in meetings by 9 o’clock. The meeting and work go on till 12 o’clock. The afternoon meandered by into the early evening when my youngest daughter arrived to stay the evening. The following day we faced the prospect of collecting her engagement ring and being faced with a demand for more money.

Friday and I am up and showered early so I could accompany my youngest to the jewelers to collect her ring. We have small breakfasts and I then drove her into town. We headed into the jewelers with masks on and determined that we were about to enter into the arena for a difficult discussion. We presented the receipt and sat and waited. The pleasant assistant sat down at the desk with us and began to interrogate the IT system. There was clearly a difficulty but we held our tongues adn waited. The ring appeared and sat in front of us, having come out of a bag with a price on it. We had bought the ring in a branch of this jewelers which had since closed and there had clearly been a difficulty transferring information about outstanding sales. Another assistant appeared with a key pad, not a good sign. The assistant says something about there being money to pay and we confirm without being asked that it was bought in a sale. There was more key tapping and she conferred with another assistant about how to put it through but eventually a receipt was printed, my daughter slipped the ring on, we took the paper work, thanked the assistant and we left, waiting till we were well away before smiling and being relieved. We drove straight home and celebrated with coffee on the patio. I noticed a hover fly on the flowers of the Hosta.

I spend the afternoon doing the crosswords and watching the opening ceremony of the Olympics games. My youngest daughter goes off to get her hair done. Inspired by the concept of the Olympics I decide to train and get myself into my kit and head for the garage to the rower. Its time to do an hours session after having been on holiday and only trained once since coming back. So I climb aboard and set off.

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It turns out to be a good session and I am surprised it has gone so well. Perhaps the walks on the beach last week preserved more fitness than I thought. I’m probably at least two kilos more than I want to be but that will come off over the next three weeks. I change out of my kit and order the family Indian take away for the evening meal. We eat as a family round the table and just chat about the day and the various things that are going on. I settle to catch up on the blog while the family watch a program about Amy Winehouse followed by a recording of one of her Radio one sessions. Tomorrow starts the great Olympic watch in between the Lions tour and catching up with the garden and the house work.

Wednesday and its race day but first there is breakfast to have and chores to do. I take a leisurely muesli breakfast and coffee on the patio before taking the car to the garage to refuel. A casual stroll to the village shop gets me todays paper and a copy of the Racing Post. So I am quickly back on the patio doing the crosswords and then studying the form for tonight’s race meeting. The whole process is quite complicated and it is easy to see how people can become obsessed with the racing scene. Having done my homework I have lunch, soup, and then get myself geared up to train for the first time since before going on holiday. I decide a half hour at my usual level on the rower will be enough in this hot weather.

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A refreshing shower and I am ready to be picked up at 4 o’clock to go to Leicester Race course. Our friends pick myself and my partner up and drive us to the course. We have been booked into the restaurant so we find ourselves at a table that over looks the race course.

Its a lovely summers evening so we have a drink and go to look at the horses in the parade ring. I’m none the wiser in terms of there ability to win and, they all have a leg at each corner, head at the front and tail at the back.

We return to the restaurant balcony and sort out a bookie to go to. We place our first bets and then eat the melon starter before the race. We do not win and look to find a better selection in the next race. We are served our main meal, a huge roast with trimmings. We have chosen wisely for this race and our horse wins at 20 to 1. The evening progresses and we get paid out in four of the six races. The bottom li ne was that we paid for the extras on the bill at the end of the evening out of our winnings, so goodies for free.

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The last race of the evening see us pick up second place. Then its time for home feeling very satisfied with our evenings endeavours. Our friends seem to have done well as well. There is time for a beer on the patio before I start the blog and head for bed. I notice that my 28 day jab is feeling less sore, perhaps winning at the horses helps.

Tuesday and I spend the day at Yorkshire Sculpture Park walking, talking and eating a picnic. A rare moment in COVID to stop and think.

Monday, one of those Mondays, a jab Monday. I’m up early, shower and eat muesli and drink a coffee on the patio before driving down to the GP surgery. The nurse is very good and takes her time with the injection. I think a combination of prophylactic paracetamol and her care and consideration make a difference. I return home and retreat to the Shed to write letters and take a call from a friend. I write a couple of letters and pop into the house to find that the specialist lagging that I ordered had arrived. So as the household take a lunch time walk I re-lag the outside boiler out flow pipe work to stop it freezing in the winter. It goes reasonably well, but the proof will be in the winter. Its a wait and see situation.

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I make a lunch time smoothie and return to the shed to write another letter and take another call. . I close up the shed and wander over to the post box to send my letters. I clear the kitchen and then take more pictures of my garden that again has given me new flowers. The sun has spurred everything into flowering.

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I settle down to watch the recording of the Elders meeting that I missed while on holiday. At first it was good to see and hear the participants but I was not ready for a piece of shock news. A colleague in the therapeutic community fraternity has been diagnosed with oesophageal cancer and is waiting to start chemotherapy. I am taken aback and I am not sure what to think and then find that another of the group had had the experience of being diagnosed with cancer. I am stunned as I had just posted a letter to the person. I never knew. I suppose there is no reason why I would know if they wanted to keep it secret. In the background the buffoon Boris is blustering about COVID and the need for personal responsibility to avoid COVID. Somehow the two just do not compute. I cook a poor version of a Spanish omelette which the family eat on the patio before face timing our youngest daughter. She is in the process of buying a house so is going through the usual hoops of such a transaction. I clear the kitchen and then settle down to watch a programme about investigating people traffickers. Then its time to write the blog. Tomorrow I am going on a picnic at YSP.

Sunday and I am up early and sitting on the patio reading Atom. I sip coffee, nibble an apple and take my drugs including my pre jab paracetamol. The sun is up and warm even this early as I read the story of how the atom was explored and how mystified we still are about what an atom really is, if there is a “really is” as the contemporary theories suggest something far more surreal and philosophically more demanding. I am left in peace for a couple of hours before the rest of the family get up and have breakfast. I spend all morning reading and I am left wondering about the hypothesis that there is something in the nature of energy that moves towards life. It takes billions of years but move towards it, it appears to do.

I finish the book and have some ponder time. Then I am on to “Why beautiful people have more daughters” by Alan Miller and Satoshi Kanazawa. Its an evolutionary psychology book that suggests an explanation of “human nature” that is based strongly in the Savanna Principle. It is a challenging book that suggests that as humans there are such things as human nature and that culture is an environmental adaptation, and that there are no different cultures only “culture”. I was fascinated by some of the accounts of how some of the so called cross cultural “discoveries” were in fact nothing of the sort. My favourite was the way Margret Meade bodged some results from a single interview of two young women because she had not done the work she should have done. The two girls interviewed admitted in their later years that they made up what they told her in the interview because they were embarrassed by the nature of the questions about relationships, boys and sex. I just love it when history turns up a totally different account of something that was taken as gospel at the time. I read through the afternoon swapping the patio for the swing seat and only break for WhatsApp messages and snacks. All read out I sort out my pill box for the week and adjust the Tesco order for tomorrow as I watch Lewis Hamilton win the British Grand Prix. We eat dinner and I retreat in doors to write the blog and get ready to watch Baptiste. Tonight will be an early night as I am going for my 28 day jab early in the morning. I am just hoping that it is the new nurse who is on duty.

Saturday and I am awake at 6 o’clock, coffee and half a bagel adn we are packing the car for the return journey. By 7:26 we are rolling from the sunny shores of Westwood Ho! Just out side Bideford we stop to top up the tank and check the tyres. First blast takes us to Bristol where we have a rapid pee break and then head north again. The traffic is flowing nicely, which is more than can be said for the south bound carriage way. We keep on until home having consumed one scone and half a bag of wine gums to sustain me. Home at just gone 11:30, a real good journey.

I unpack straight away and get my washing into the machine and the rest of my stuff put away. I get a drink and settle down to watch the rugby league final, half time is hang the washing out time. At the end of the game I gird up my loins and get the lawn mower out. I cut the grass back and front. I then took time out to take pictures of the flowers that have come out while I’ve been a way. Once again the garden is bountiful in its gifts.

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What can I say other than wow, nature does it again. We dinner outside and I return inside to write the blog before getting my washing in. I shall be having an early night as I can feel tiredness creeping up on me and tomorrow I start to take prophylactic paracetamol to offset the reaction that I get to my 28 day injection on Monday. But it is a joy to return to my home Wi Fi, the speed is so much better than when on holiday.

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Friday. The WiFi has failed completely now so this is being done on my phone. Short and sweet today. Breakfast, a lazy morning and a cream tea at noon.

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We return to the apartment to rest and prepare to walk off the calorie over load. The afternoon walk sees us up and down the beach to complete our 10,000 steps. We take another rest during which time I pack. More resting before an evening sea side fish and chips finished off with an ice cream van strawberry cornet. As the sun goes down I wrestle with the WiFi and lose. Hence the phone bodge today.