Sunday lay in, late breakfast, bacon bagel and then some clearing up and hoovering through. Time to sort out where all the Christmas presents are going to be stored and used. This triggers a major clear out of old jumpers , underwear and holiday gear. So after two boxes of charity jumpers my new clothes are now neatly stowed.
I settle down feeling that I’ve done a good job and watch a rugby match. This afternoon my partners mother has been moved from hospital to a care home to recuperate from her recent operation to pin her broken leg. I settle down to read one of my presents and get a call from a friend who is on that parental post Christmas trip to replace a toy that is not doing what it should do. In this case a doll that would not wake up, happily the replacement one did fart as promised.
I continue to read through the evening as various TV programmes pass me by, as does the football till I can read no more and start the blog. I know that I shall return to my book post blog as I am finding it fascinating and speaks to the 18 year old me without qualifications who found himself throwing cases of Pepsi off the back of a lorry for a living and not knowing if that was going to be it for the rest of my life. Thankfully it wasn’t.
How come I’ve never across this classic before?
Tomorrow is a crucial day. Tomorrow is the day I resume training, I resume the fight, cancers had its own way too long recently, tomorrow I take control of my diet again, no sweets, less carbs and more water.
Saturday, Boxing day, an early coffee and then a quick clearing away the last of yesterdays debris. I fill my weekly drugs wallet. We cook breakfast and sit around chatting and talking houses and house buying plans, what the future might hold and whether the weather would hold off long enough for my youngest daughter and her partner to make it to the relatives in the forest. We watch them pack up their car including the two rugs we are replacing, apparently they will make the loft they sleep in tonight that much more snug.
My afternoon was filled with football as our local team were on and managed to scrape a draw. With little to do I watched more football and took pictures of the new ice hockey jerseys that I got for Christmas. I also got some pictures of my favourite images from Christmas presents.
My favourite Ice Hockey Team: The Arizona Coyotes
The Pittsburgh Penguins must have the cutest emblem. Strange Things, waiting for the next series impatiently.
The only thing to do now was to soak in a long bath and listen to Bette Midler and create my first Spotify play list. I was blissfully listening to when A Man Loves a Woman when I am called for the inevitable boxing day turkey curry.
My evening comprises of too many after eight mints and too much TV to the point that writing the blog is the only sane thing left to do before I retreat to reading my new Christmas books.
Christmas!!!!!! A profusion of presents and a feast of food. My partner is up before everyone else to get the turkey from the shed and get things ready for the oven. After a coffee to get us going we sit in the lounge, where Santa has finished the jigsaw that was left undone last night.
We look at the collective pile of presents awaiting us and start the the ritual of opening them in rounds.
We uh and arr as we open the presents and express our pleasure and surprise. Life is full of surprises and this morning was full of pleasant ones. We have a coffee break and then continue until the last parcel has been opened. What is left is the carnage of emptied boxes and discarded wrapping paper.
The post present carnage.
As we open presents we also respond to messages from friends and family sending seasons greetings and thanks for their presents. At the end of this its time to think about the dinner, I set the table and my partner sets about bringing the meal to completion.
We feast traditionally and end with a flaming Christmas pudding.
Viola! flaming pudding. Foreigners find this a strange and scary English ritual
We are podged, stuffed and full so retreat to rest and see the Queen. The rest of the day passes in Exploding kittens, roller reindeer and kazoo playing. A video exists but as it contains others apart from me it unfortunately cannot be here, but I might share it if asked privately.
Our evening is taken with TV, telephone calls with relatives and films. My family drift off to bed to read and sleep so I take the opportunity to write the blog and prepare to strip the turkey and tidy up the bits that need doing. I am awash with too much sugar and I can feel myself already craving exercise and smoothies but I am going to resist for a little while and indulge just a little more. Drugs,chores and bed for me.
Christmas eve and I am up early for a shower. I try one of my new breakfast smoothies, which turns out to be rather nice, however mid way through it my youngest daughter and partner arrive. Yippeeee. We get them in the drive and I go out and pull our car up behind them, a sort of hoping no one notices maneuver. Whilst waiting for the windscreen to deice a van pulls up and a guy walks down our drive with a large square package. I am intrigued as I am not aware of us expecting anything. I have a sudden thought that this may be the rug I never expected to arrive. So once I’ve moved the car I get back inside picking the package up on the way. We sit and have coffee and a chat around the table to catch up. After a while my inquisitiveness gets the better of me and I open the parcel. I am surprised it is in fact the rug I believed I would never see, for which we had already found a replacement. I unfold it in the kitchen space and the whole family view it and decide we like it. We decide to give it a go in the dining area. Once down the consensus is that that the colours match the overall environment well. We decide to give it a go.
The rug that was not expected turns out to be good.
So with the excitement of the new rug behind us we settle into lazing, baking and resting. My intention is to continue in the same vein for the rest of the day until it becomes Santa time, when the present hoards will magically appear beneath the tree and await for us to awake on Christmas morning.
I think of all my family and friends and wonder how they are, some are having a bad time either being in hospital or recovering from a hospital stay, others are battling illness in themselves or their partners. One friend is embattled with a company who have failed to deliver a bed for her aged mother in time for Christmas. Other friends have had their Christmas plans wrecked by COVID. Others are making the best of what they can and those with children are doing their upmost to make this Christmas as happy as it can be and as lively and fun as a fesnying . All in all despite everything I am fortunate to have my family fit and healthy and where possible with me on Christmas day. I look forward to playing dice, games and doing the traditional festive jigsaw. Bring on the Magic.
Boom its Wednesday morning of the 23rd and that means Turkey boy has a bird to collect early from the butchers at the garden centre. So I am up and dressed in a flash (well a slow burn ember really). My partner and I drive off to the garden centre convinced that despite COVID, tier 4 and the southern mutant scourge we thought that there would be a reasonable number of people there. I pull into the car park, deserted. Excellent no other humans about. A quick walk to the exit doors that obligingly open and we head for the butchers. Not a soul anywhere apart from flesh hackers preparing joints and stringing ribs. I hand over the club card receipt and a still fresh in the morning butcher takes it off me and disappears into the chilly behind the scenes world of hung carcasses and piled boxes of dead avian. He reappears with a couple of boxes and taps up the price. We order additional sausages and pay the bill. Shuffling along to the next counter we get sausage rolls, vegetable rolls and a pork pie. We get out before any other humans turn up. So we drive home and stow the crown in the freezer as we wont be going to my partners mother for Christmas day and I take the bird out to the shed to stay cool for the next 36 hours. The rest we stuff into the fridge.
Breakfast of bacon bagel, coffee and drugs before driving off to the local farm shop to get more diary goods. I confidently get there and assess the fact that there are no more parking spaces on the hard standing and with great aplomb, faith in my judgement and proud of my creativity back onto the field adjoining the parking area. All goes well until I try to pull off to get in to the now vacant parking spot. I’m stuck in the mud and nothing I do backwards or forward gets me anywhere. Now its pissing with rain. A bloke comes over to offer help but we cannot move it. He goes off to get help from the farm. It is now throwing it down, we are both soaked with sodden shoes and having trouble to find anything funny in our situation. Eventually some farm workers come and we are able to push it back out of the mud ruts and then drive it up on to the hard standing. Wet, muddy and slightly peeved we do our shopping, top up with fresh milk and then get back in the car. I back out very carefully and get us home, where I strip off in the porch and head for the washing machine. The new food is squirreled away, my washing put on in the machine and then its time for hot chocolate and a scone. I put more stuff away, empty bins and generally get things ready for my daughter and her partners arrival later. It turns out that they decide to come tomorrow after all. I’ve been happily wandering around in my underwear intending to cut my toe nails when I get a text message saying the smoothies that I ordered had been delivered. I go to the door and find… nothing. Not at the back door either. Its a mystery so I check my DPD app and sure enough it says the item has been delivered and there is a photo of it in a porch, the problem being, its not my porch. I check the address and find they have missed me by one number, so now I am forced to put on trousers and plod across the road to the neighbour. The box is still on the porch but has been opened, no lights on, no cars in the drive, I pick it up and liberate it from its abandonment. Home and I unpack the box to find my pouches of goodies. Having popped them in the freezer I can get my trousers off again and cut my toenails, one of those simple pleasures in life. ever since my chemotherapy which thickened my nails I’ve had to be quite rugged with them and take a decent file to one or two of them to keep them in check. In all honesty for me its more like taking a horse to a farrier to have its hoofs trimmed. Only one thing to do after that and that is hoover round every where.
So the washing is done dried and folded to go away, bread made and another loaf on the way, its time to tidy my office end of the sofa, have a beer and write the blog early. I’ve no idea what I am going to do this evening, TV perhaps, banjo perhaps, write perhaps, bath and tarting up perhaps, read or draw perhaps, but now I am hungry and need to eat before whatever I choose to do. Whatever happens tomorrow I will do nothing except indulge myself and my family as we ready ourselves for the great turkey eating.
Tuesday and the end of the to do list is in sight. breakfast as usual and then some tidying up to do. Today was a prosaic day of getting ready for the whole household to log off and stop working. It is coming down to the last chores of turkey collection, veg storing and doing the restricted Santa run to relatives in the village.. Still the odd Amazon afterthought arrives. In this case some more lights that I put up in the hall way at the same time as I hook the seasonal wreath on the front door.
There is yet another set of lights to go up but I am restricted by the number of available sockets. I also attend to tidying up some loose ends at work and send the services I work with an electronic Christmas card.
The words that went with it were more jolly and positive. At the end of the morning a friend rings and we have time for a prolonged catch up and chat. Her children are very excited about being excited about being excited about Christmas. Which I think says it all. We compared notes on our state of Christmas readiness and compared to do lists. We also compared the way our families have had to compromise in the face of the latest COVID restrictions and how that has created heartache and the need to adapt. It would seem every reasonable rational family is having to accommodate the discomforts and disappointments this Christmas. It was however good to know that we are not alone in trying to stick to the rules and trying to adapt the best we can. It feels like there is no real wining in this situation at all. It was a good conversation and a good reminder of what this isolation is costing all of us. Its patience that will get us back to where we would like to be.
Post lunch I was hanging lights, tidying and finalising the Tesco delivery, which prompted me to book another slot post Christmas. It mean an eleven day break between deliveries but I see this as a blessing as we will have to eat our turkey mountain. I think we are now sorted in to 2021 just in time for a no deal Brexit and a gallop up the tiers. Just how many tiers do you think Boris can create between now and Easter? The family stop working, turn off computers, come off line and sigh a sigh of relief. My partner and eldest daughter go off to do the relatives Santa drop, which affords me the chance to trim and oil my beard my beard for Christmas. In the post decorating throw out I threw away my expensive but unused beard oils, so I had to resort to baby oil from my overnight travel bag.
So with the lights twinkling in the hall, the family out of work we settle down to await my partners singing teacher to arrive to deliver a Christmas present to her. In the meantime while we wait I order smoothies from an internet supplier in anticipation of my post Christmas food guilt. I know I am going to over eat, over sugar myself and get really dissatisfied with my self at which point I will begin to train like a loony, radically amend my diet and swear to a life of abstinence and artistic endeavour. We wait till the event has taken place before for we eat and relax for the evening. Having eaten I settle on the sofa to write the blog. I intend an early shower and an early night after all this man has to be up and off to collect the turkey and the turkey breast early in the morning. We will tour the local farm shops to top up with local butter, cheese and milk and whatever local pie makers have to offer. As long as we are back by 2pm in time for the now much amended Tesco order to arrive. With that done Christmas cannot come quickly enough. I am like my friends child, excited about feeling excited about Christmas and determined to enjoy it regardless of what is happening in the rest of the world. I am aware that this is not quite the spirit of Christmas but if I have to isolate then I am going to enjoy it to the fullest while I am able.
Monday and I get up after a bad nights sleep to a dish of muesli and a coffee accompanied of course by my drugs. What to do first on the first day of winter. Write letters of course and that’s what I do for most of the morning. I’ve taken to using an old fashioned dipping pen, just nib and haft with a bottle of ink. Its a challenge but adds to the effort of writing the letters, which I like. Somehow it makes them more works of art than a dashed off email of pitter patter finger play. Pens demand that you make the shapes. Again I like that, nothing is ever the same, every letter different in each of its occurrences, like people. I like the thought that unique shapes are made for unique people, there is a sense of evolution in that. The fact that the shapes form symbols of ideas that come from the activity of my brain is exciting and even more so when I think that someone else’s brain will have activity they would not have had if I had not sent the letter is really exciting. All of this is one way that collaboratively we make meaning of our lives, or at least I do. Without those mind mirrors I would be horribly lost inside my own head as my thoughts would just whirr around being prey to all sorts of unconscious distortions and interpretations. Of course who I trust with my inner pixies is another matter. I digress, letters written I pop across to the post box and back home to consider what to do next.
There is only one thing to do, open the post. A Christmas card with a present from a friend, which is exciting and a CT scan appointment in January. Its a pelvis and abdomen scan to check the tumors in my back. It goes with the CAT scan that I will have to check the progress of the cancer in my spine and the rest of my skeleton. All this in preparation for my next oncologist appointment in February. While I am in a medical mood I ring the GP surgery and book my next 28 day stabbing on the 4th of January 2021 plus my three monthly B12 jab. I thought I would get in before the world closes down for Christmas and New Year. I will also need to order my next months drugs as well to ensure they are available for me by the fourth. So much “cancermin” to keep an eye on. Having done all this its time to get up in the loft and get the Christmas boxes down, at least six big boxes of balls, gods, tinsel and lights. That done I recruit my eldest daughter to help bring the tree in. We set it up in its netted state while I sort out the lights.
The tree awaits release.
I spend a while checking the lights and the various animals that we have with internal illumination. Then its all down to winding the lights round the tree and selecting which lighting patterns to set them on to avoid inducing an epileptic fit in family and passers by. I favour the more tranquil fading in and out that induces a sense of wondering how drunk you actually are or not. I finally get it done.
Of course I pop outside and see what it looks like so far from the outside world. It looks like this.
The baubles will come later but now I set about putting a new backing sheet into the art piece my eldest daughter made in response to seeing Cirque Du Soleil for the first time in Florida. The back ground sheet was white but we have changed it to black and think it works better. I complete the new backing and rehang it in the dining area.
The rehung art work with its new black background
So time for tea and then I spend time hanging my favourite drop baubles on the tree along with the rainbow that my youngest daughter bought and a Tucan ball sent from a friend. They look splendid. My work is done, its up to the rest of the family to complete the tree now. So I leave them to it and retreat to the bedroom to write the blog. I sneak downstairs and take a picture of the completed tree. Ta Da!
Ta Da! Compete with Red Sonia atop the tree.
So all that’s left now is putting the boxes back in the loft and once the God in a Box nativity set is placed and some additional decorations and lights go up around the house over the coming days the rest can be cleared away. But for now that’s me done for the day. Tomorrow I’ve some work to do, messages to send an invoice to write and send and calls to make and take.
Sunday, I wake and find my partner already on the phone talking to the hospital about how her mum is doing. Its a long call but some of the unclear areas are clarified, which make the conversation with her mum easier later. Breakfast and then it is time to do something about the mountain of cardboard, packaging and jettisoned “stuff” that is sitting in the hall way. However before breakfast is over I’ve ordered a new mirror for the back bedroom following the window shaped mirror theme. I was initially miffed to find the one that would do the job can only be collected from the store after about three hours. I press the go button not expecting to hear from the store for a long time but almost immediately I get a text to say I can collect the mirror immediately. My youngest daughter rings and we discuss what the new COVID restrictions means for our Christmas arrangements. She and her partner can no longer come to us for the five days that we planned. We agree that they will come on Christmas eve and leave on Boxing day. I know she is disappointed and upset but I think this is the best adaptation we can make. After the call I decide to do battle with the cardboard mountain in the hall way. I bag, I fold, I crunch and I take a sledge hammer to the bins contents to compact them enough to take the new waste. Finally after stuffing, ramming and compressing I get everything into the bins and the Hippobag, which is now waiting to be whisked away. So at last for the first time in months the hall is clear.
We discover that the floor in the hall way and are impressed.
While I have been beavering away my partner and daughter have been putting new cushion covers on new cushions to match the new colour scheme in the lounge. It works well and lifts the room.
They really are blue
My partner and daughter go for a walk while I continue to put stuff away and walk in the garden organising the shed. I notice that the flowers are already showing signs of budding and that there are fresh green shoots of bulbs poking through. I find the hint of spring encouraging and strengthening.
When my partner returns from her walk we get in the car and go to the store to collect the mirror. Because I have elected to “click and collect” I can text my car details to the store so that when I arrive someone comes out to the car with my goods. I am dubious but it works brilliantly. We drive home and drop the mirror off and go to the garden centre and buy a Christmas tree and some food. Once home I set about hanging the mirror, which goes relatively well. Our decision to put mirrors in the bedrooms to reflect the wallpapered walls appears to work. It adds light, depth and colour to the rooms, so we are pleased with ourselves.
Once again the mirror choice is good.
I clear away my tools and settle down to watch “His Dark Materials” over tea. I have to say I’m not as captivated as I was, I have got to the stage where I think I need to read the books as I am clearly missing something in the TV version. A combination of football and Sport Personality of the Year occupy me until I abandon the TV to write the blog. Tomorrow I shall bring the tree in and set the lights up but the dressing of the tree will be the task of the rest of the household.
We are almost there, heating system working, house redecorated and fresh. We have an environment in which to ride out the worst a winter can throw at us. Now there is only my partners hospitalised mother, my cancer and the grind of working from home to contain and deal with, Oh yes and Christmas and new year. Alongside this is the constant of missing friends, missing conversations and missing the ideas and thoughts of others. It restricts the ability to make meaning of what all this is, one of the advantages of diversity and engagement.
Saturday and it is time to clear the decks and get the house straight for the Christmas week. So a breakfast of bacon bagel (with gluten) and then we set to to clear the boxes in the dining area and the office. We spend hours putting things away and finding new ways of storing stuff. We are ruthless and throw out lots of stuff and gradually reclaim the dining area. I crack on in the office and pack up a lot of the stuff that I have accumulated over the working years. It goes into a box and into the loft. The office is now my partners now that she is the one who is working full time from home.
We continue with the dining area and finally get the new rug down. Because the new rug is bigger than the old one the table looks smaller and the room bigger.
By this point we have a hallway full of cardboard and rubbish and begin to get messages that Boris is going to do a COVID news conference at 4 o’clock. So we tune in and watch Boris invent tier 4 and totally fuck up our Christmas. Typically it is the bastard southerners who have screwed it for every one with their mutant virus that goes faster then the normal COVID. I am gutted. God knows how we are going to mange to eat all the turkey and the sugar mountain that has just arrived for Christmas.
So its tea, ironically turkey and beans, and then Strictly Come Dancing, the final. Won this year by Bill Bayley. I retreat to the bath and soak. Headphones on I laze and think through the Christmas options, and review where I stand on this screwed up festive season. I order some pixie dust and decide we will have a Christmas tree despite everything because we are worth it. Decision made I get out of the bath, watch football, mend a broken trinket from my youngest daughter and write the blog. Tomorrow I will clear the hall and buy a Christmas tree.
I WAKE TO A WET DULL CRAP DAY AND IT DOES NT GET BETTER ALL DAY
Yep its raining, again. I get up, take meds and cook a bacon gluten free bagel. Gluten free bagels taste crap, I wont be doing that again. The first learning point of the day. The guy who tidies our garden turns up for the last session of the year. I make him tea and listen to him talk about his work and agree what needs doing this morning. Once he is under way I go to the local shop and buy Newcastle Brown and a paper. I note the young couple that come in without masks. I avoid them and wish them ill. Returning home I wrap up a gardening book and the bottles of beer. I find a box to put them in and wrap it up with a card. My partner delivers it to the gardener and pays him before he heads off.
I start to put the pictures back on the walls during which the post arrives. Christmas cards, one includes a surprise letter, which is a very welcome distraction but what was most exciting and cruelly disappointing was a wooden Christmas post card from a friend and her family. Yes a wooden postcard Christmas card, a delight, but it is in a plastic bag with “Our Sincere Apologies” emblazoned across the top if it.
Some how the Post Office has managed to break a wooden postcard! The card is lovely and is signed by all the family, I am really touched by it and consequently monumentally pissed off that that some twat has managed to damage a wooden postcard.
Only the post office could manage this level of violent incompetence
I vow to follow the instructions on the plastic bag and complain bitterly to the post office. I will see what happens. Ideally I would want a sacrificial apology to the family, preferably someone flagellating themselves publicly.
I return to hanging pictures and trying to empty boxes. Of course I cannot remember where all the pictures go and of course the decorators have mislaid one or two of the picture pins. I do quite well and end up with only two small pictures that I have no hooks for. We are getting to the tricky point of any redecorating, that tricky point of deciding what is destined for the Hippo Megabag, the loft or a new place in the house. I already know that some of my trinkets/gifts/memorabilia will be boxed and lofted. Now that COVID has relocated and reallocated working spaces the old arrangement of “Nick Nacks” has to change to reflect who occupies the space. The question is whether I can get shelves up in the shed before Christmas, actually thinking about it I am pretty sure that I have a set of shelves stashed in the garage.
As evening sets in I settle to watching some rugby and thinking about the coming week and how I am going to go into the new year. One relief is that the RCP are actually going to pay my August to November invoices, which of course has been balanced out by the decorators bill arriving. What comes in flows out, it was ever thus. Time for drugs and bed.
